The point is to use up all available buffer memory in the application, and if this buffer is not restricted, cause the application to be killed by the operating system. The concept works on a lot of HTTP applications, and the idea came from reading one of Marc Maiffrets posts to Bugtraq and this really goes far beyond just the Websweeper application. And keep filling in a's. The HTTP request will then be buffered and the a's will be pushed to the application and memory will be allocated to handle the beginning request. This is all terribly generalized, as some applications handle these attacks quite well, but a lot of them do not.
None known, the vendor suggest placing a firewall infront of the websweeper application.
If a client program wilfully sends a large number of malformed requests and holds the connections open, the request data will fill up the memory and eventually you will run out of virtual memory. Under normal situations this will not be an issue, except where Internal Users pose a significant security risk to your system. In these situations alternative low-level packet security software such as firewalls may need to be considered. Nonetheless the wider issues of what can be done to minimise exposure to hacking is with Engineering and they are always striving to make our products as secure and robust as possible. Thank you for your comments on this issue.