According to certain non-limiting embodiments disclosed herein, the functionality of a server is extended with a mechanism for identifying connections with clients that have exhibited attack characteristics (for example, characteristics indicating a DoS attack), and for transitioning internal ownership of those connections such that server resources consumed by the connection are reduced, while keeping the connection open. The connection thus moves from a state of relatively high resource use to a state of relatively low server resource use. According to certain non-limiting embodiments disclosed herein, the functionality of a server is extended by enabling the server to determine that any of a client and a connection exhibits one or more attack characteristics (e.g., based on at least one of client attributes, connection attributes, and client behavior during the connection, or otherwise). As a result of the determination, the server changes its treatment of the connection.