What is the definition of DDoS?

Imagine a mob of shoppers on Black Friday trying to enter a store through a revolving door, but a group of hooligans block the shoppers by going round and round the door like a carousel. There’s lots of pushing and shoving and griping, and the legitimate shoppers can’t get in to buy anything. Business comes to a standstill.

Know more: an attacker sets up 100 drone

This is DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, which is a malicious network attack that involves hackers forcing numerous Internet-connected devices to send network communication requests to one specific service or website with the intention of overwhelming it with false traffic or requests. This has the effect of tying up all available resources to deal with these requests, and crashing the web server or distracting it enough that normal users cannot create a connection between their systems and the server.

To pull off a DDoS attack, hackers need an army of zombie computers to do their bidding. Hackers use what we call a DDoSTool to enslave computers and build their army. This zombie network of bots (botnet) communicates with the command and control server (C&C), waiting for commands from the hacker who’s running the botnet. In the case of a DDoS attack, it can happen that tens of thousands or even millions of bots work simultaneously to send large amounts of network traffic in the direction of the target server. Usually, but not always, the original infecting DDoSTool does not attempt to steal data or otherwise harm the host. Instead, it lies dormant until called upon to participate in a DDoS attack.

The motivations behind attacking a website or service vary. Hactivists will use a DDoS to make a political statement against an organization or government. There are criminals who do it to hold a commercial website hostage until they receive a ransom payment. Unscrupulous competitors have employed a DDoS to play dirty against rival companies. Sometimes, a DDoS is also a strategy to distract website administrators, allowing the attacker to plant other malware such as adware, spyware, ransomware, or even a legacy virus.

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