A method for controlling consumption of resources by a packet destination involves receiving a plurality of packets from a network, identifying the packet destination consuming greater than a pre-determined amount of resources to process the plurality of packets, analyzing each of the plurality of packets by a classifier to determine to which of a plurality of temporary data structures each of the plurality of packet is forwarded, forwarding each of the plurality of packets to one of the plurality of temporary data structures as determined by the classifier, requesting a number of packets from the one of the plurality of temporary data structures associated with the packet destination by the virtual serialization queue, wherein the number of packets is limited by an attack control parameter associated with the virtual serialization queue, and forwarding the number of packets to the virtual serialization queue.