StandardServer - await() shutdown

[Lukas Bradley]

I'm looking at the shutdown command wait code, and I'm a bit perplexed at
one piece.

 

Could someone explain to me how the following code from StandardServer,
starting from line 526 (v5.0.27), helps protect from a Dos attack?  Why not
simply limit the incoming stream to 1024, and be done with it?

 

There is some crazy random Star Trek code in here.   Please learn me.

 

Lukas

 

 

            // Read a set of characters from the socket

            StringBuffer command = new StringBuffer();

            int expected = 1024; // Cut off to avoid DoS attack

            while (expected < shutdown.length()) {

                if (random == null)

                    random = new Random(System.currentTimeMillis());

                expected += (random.nextInt() % 1024);

            }

            while (expected > 0) {

                int ch = -1;

                try {

                    ch = stream.read();

                } catch (IOException e) {

                    System.err.println("StandardServer.await: read: " + e);

                    e.printStackTrace();

                    ch = -1;

                }

                if (ch < 32)  // Control character or EOF terminates loop

                    break;

                command.append((char) ch);

                expected--;

            }