What does a DDoS attack mean?
Distributed Denial of Service, which is for short, called DDoS, is a cyber-attack. It’s performed to disrupt essential targets like a network, system, or server. That is achieved by overwhelming them with lots of traffic, which is coming from many devices. The word “distributed” refers to the many various sources that are used to achieve the attack. When the target is down, the DDoS attack is complete. The outcome is simply not allowing any user to access it.
The DDoS attack can be of several kinds. Techniques can modify, or they could be mixed and accomplish a stronger hit to the target. Overall, any DDoS attack operates by infecting devices. If there are more connected to the Internet, more of them are going to attack the victim. This happens even globally and from any kinds of compromised sources like computers, servers, IoT devices, wearables. The target is not able to handle the traffic. It becomes sluggish and eventually becomes completely drowned.
How does it work?
Internet-connected devices are the ones, which carry out DDoS attacks.
These networks include computers and other devices like IoT devices that are infected with malware. This way, for the attacker, it is possible to take control of them and operate remotely. Every one of these devices is referred to as zombies or bots. In addition, a group of them is called a botnet.
When a botnet is built, the attacker can proceed to perform the attack. Each bot receives instructions remotely.
The victim’s network or server, which is affected by the botnet, sends with each bot request to the IP address of the target. Like that, the network or server likely gets flooded. The result is a denial of service to accessing regular traffic.
The reason for which separating regular traffic and attack traffic is so difficult is simple. Every bot is presented as a legitimate Internet device.
The motive for DDoS attacks
DDoS attacks are gaining more popularity and becoming the most common kind of cyber threat. The number of attacks performed is growing rapidly.
The motives that are behind the attack are mainly:
- Shakedown – The ones that apply DDoS attacks or using them as a threat and like a method for forcing their target to pay them.
- Business disputes – Companies strategically can use DDoS attacks to take down the site of an opponent.
- Philosophy – These people are called “hacktivists”. Their targets are usually sites that implement an ideology, which the attackers disagree with.
- Boredom – These are cyber vandals who are searching for an adrenaline rush. They typically use pre written scripts to start DDoS attacks.
Keep yourself safe from DDoS attack.
If you want, there is a method to defend yourself from DDoS attacks. In case your name servers are the main target of the DDoS attack, there is a way to protect them. What you are going to need is a DDoS protected DNS. The essential of it is that it is a network, which contains a strategically located in various places servers. So they are able to balance the load intelligently. So providers of DDoS protected DNS can mitigate the traffic successfully.
Also, if one server completely goes down, your domain will continue to resolve, thanks to the other servers.