Years ago, DDoS attacks were seen as small, inconvenient, minor annoyances, but things have progressed, and DDoS attacks are often a big deal. The ever-present threat of cyberattacks remains significant in today’s online businesses and fast internet. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are among the most prominent and damaging types.
During a DDoS attack, cybercriminals will flood or overbear a network with false traffic that causes it to become unoperational or unable to function as it normally would. This article sheds light on their impact and preparation you can take against them.
A Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack is a criminal attempt to disrupt the regular functioning of a website, network, or online service by sending it an overwhelming amount of illegitimate or fake traffic. The discerning sign of a DDoS Attack is using multiple compromised devices, often forming what is known as a botnet to try and carry out the assault.
When a victim of a DDoS Attack gets struck, their info structure gets bombarded and overwhelmed with a flood attack of massive volume of incoming network traffic. The rapid influx and volume of fake traffic will congest the targeted network, bandwidth, server resources, or other critical components, making them unable to complete any request by legitimate users. As a devastating result, this targeted service becomes slow, unresponsive, or overall inaccessible to any legitimate traffic, which can cause inconvenience, financial loss or losses, and potential reputable damage.
DDoS attacks reside in a network of compromised devices, commonly called a botnet, to flood the desired target with overwhelming network traffic. This botnet's primary goal is to compromise desktops, servers, loT devices, laptops, and even smartphones, controlled remotely by the attacker. This attacker will commonly employ malware (such as trojan horses or worms) to infect and take over or control a device, often without the owner’s knowledge.
Once the botnet is deployed, the DDoS attacker organizes a coordinated assault by instructing any compromised device to send a massive amount of attack traffic directly to the target simultaneously. This sudden flood of requests bombards the target’s resources, making it extremely difficult for legitimate users to get any real request processed–all while disrupting the normal function of the target’s system.
Yes, in most jurisdictions, DDoS attacks are considered illegal. Being involved in or conducting a DDoS Attack is considered a federal criminal offense under various computer crime and hacking laws. Unauthorized access to computer systems, the disruption of services, and intentional damage to networks are all typically covered under these laws. Offenders of DDoS attacks can face severe legal consequences such as significant fines–or even imprisonment for up to ten years.
While the end goal of a DoS attack and a DDoS attack is essentially the same, to disrupt services, they differ in terms of the number of attacking sources involved. DoS uses one source to disrupt traffic, while DDoS uses multiple.
A DoS attack typically originates from a single source meant to either a) overwhelm the target with a mass flood of attack traffic or b) exploit vulnerabilities. Essentially this attack's main goal is to shut down the target server or machine to make it inaccessible to the users.
DDoS attacks come from multiple sources and form a botnet while coordinating the attack to amplify the impact. This makes the devices infected by a DDoS Attack infected by malware and allows the attacker to become in control of your devices remotely. Since the nature of a DDoS is more distributed, it makes it more difficult to mitigate as resolving these attacks requires identifying and neutralizing multiple attacking sources across multiple networks.
DDoS attacks come in many shapes and forms, each with a different goal and targeting different aspects of an organization’s infrastructure. Here are some common types:
There are a few reasons why preventing DDoS attacks is quite difficult. While it is not impossible, it can be very hard for these reasons:
While it is very difficult to avoid a DDoS Attack, proactive DDoS protection measures can help mitigate the risk of being attacked significantly.
Organizations should implement a multi-layered defense strategy to best defend against DDoS attacks.
In the unfortunate event that a DDoS attack should happen, take fast action along these lines:
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Virtually all mitigation in our TPCs™ is carried out in hardware, which makes it suitable for dealing with low-and-slow and volumetric attacks at several hundred gigabits per second. The advanced fingerprint function allows us to identify every device behind a request, and subsequently block individual devices behind a single source IP mounting an application-based DDoS attack. We extract hundreds of parameters from connecting clients and their web browsers to safely identify individual attackers. Let us help you today!