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What is: DDoS

DDoS short for Distributed Denial of Service attack is a type of attack on websites performed using bots. In a DDoS attack, hackers use bots to generate fake traffic so they can exhaust your server resources and crash your website. Difference between ddos and dos These attacks are made by hackers for extortion (demand money) or to fulfill other unethical needs from the website owner. While DDoS attacks doesn’t automatically compromise the security of your website, they can most certainly bring your website down and make sure that none of your users can access your site. The period of a DDoS attack can vary from a day to a week, or more. It can destroy the online presence of a website or application during this time. If you are a website owner, and you are facing DDoS attacks, then you need to apply a strong firewall on a DNS level to mitigate it.

Is Your Company Protected From a DDoS Attack?

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack staged by the Mirai botnet in the fall of 2016 is legendary for its scale and reach. Hackers managed to weaponize thousands of unsecured IoT devices. The botnet was then used to flood the internet with traffic, crippling large businesses all over the world, including Dyn, a company that hosts domain name systems (DNS) for major websites. When reporting on a more recent DDoS attack, Dark Reading noted that these attacks are becoming more difficult to fight because they are growing in speed and intensity and use multiple source addresses and ports. how does a ddos attack work? Your company may feel it is doing enough to protect itself against a DDoS attack, but is it? Even if you are using a firewall with an intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS), you still may not be doing enough to stop a DDoS attack. Fighting a DDoS attack with a firewall may actually make your organization more vulnerable or disr...

Understanding DDoS Attacks

Most DDoS attacks are carried out by botnets, a “group of computers which have been infected by malware and have come under the control of a malicious user.” These machines are then hijacked and used against whatever service the attacker wants denied service. While the computers that make up the botnet are infected by malware, it is important to note that if your WordPress website is DDoS’d, your website is not being infected with malware. The DDoS simply prevents normal traffic from getting to you. However, if your computer has already been compromised by a security flaw, your servers could become part of a botnet that carries out a DDoS attack on someone else. Read more: DDoS vs DoS DDoS is Not Hacking As we said above, a DDoS attack is not an attempt at exploiting a vulnerability to gain access to your site. That’s more along the lines of a brute force attack. That’s when a particular party attempts to power their way into your site by repeated login attempts and password re...

DDoS Attacks – An In-Depth Guide

The modern world is unfortunately rife with online crime, with various different cyber-attacks having taken their toll on individuals and businesses across the globe in recent years. This certainly doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon either, with cybercriminals using increasingly sophisticated methods to get their hands on personal information for their own financial gain. Taking into account the abundance of cybercrime in the digital age, the amount of jargon surrounding this can sometimes be a little overwhelming. DDoS may be one of the terms you have come across, which is something that will be looked at in more detail throughout the following article. To gain further insight, simply continue reading as we cover everything that you need to know. What is a DDoS attack and how does it work ? Otherwise known as a distributed denial-of-service attack, a DDoS attack targets online services and websites in an effort to render it inoperable. It essentially involves a process...

Bitfinex and OKEx Hit by DDoS Attacks

Two major crypto exchanges, Bitfinex and OKEx, were hit with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in a span of 24 hours. Bitfinex was down for under an hour, and OKEx was down for several hours, but both exchanges are up and running now. A DDoS attack is when a hacker sends a flood of messages and requests to a server in order to overwhelm the server. Essentially, the server will be so busy handling the attacker’s requests that requests from regular users will not work, resulting in the website appearing to be down or working very slowly. how does ddos work ? The Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Bitfinex, Paolo Ardoino, said that the DDoS attack was highly sophisticated, and therefore the person behind the attack had deeply prepared for it. This makes it seem likely that the same hacker was behind both attacks. Fortunately, Bitfinex says this same attack will never work again. In addition to Bitfinex and OKEx, apparently the small decentralized exchange (DEX) Deversi...

How to Fight DDoS

"You can’t stop one from starting; that is out of your control," Morales said about the chances of an enterprise being hit by a DDoS. Denial service attack There are, however, steps that an enterprise can take to help mitigate risk. Bandwidth is helpful, but it's not sufficient to deflect all types of modern attacks. "Purpose-built, on-premise DDoS protection enables the enterprise to remain in control of mitigations for the majority of DDoS attacks today," Morales said. "However, if you are facing a large volumetric attack, that is best mitigated in the cloud." Third party services, including those from Akamai, VeriSign and CloudFlare, all aim to offer cloud-based DDoS protections. Morales' company, Arbor, recommends a layered approach that combines on-premise DDoS protection with cloud-based protection from a service provider.

The advent of DDoS-for-hire services

The advent of DDoS-for-hire services means that even the least tech-savvy individual can exact  revenge on some website. Step on up to the counter and purchase a stresser that can systemically take down a company. According to Neustar, almost three quarters of all global brands, organizations and companies have been victims of a DDoS attack. And more than 3,700 DDoS attacks occur each day. what happens during a ddos attack ? Chase Cunningham, director of cyber operations at A10 Networks, said to find IoT-enabled devices, all you have to do is go on an underground site and ask around for the Mirai scanner code. Once you have that you can scan for anything talking to the internet that can be used for that type of attack.  “Or you can go to a site like Shodan and craft a couple of simple queries to look for device specific requests. Once you get that information you just go to your DDoS for hire tool and change the configuration to point at the right target and use the r...