DDoS attack: What exactly happens there?

A DDoS attack is one of the most insidious forms of cybercrime, but you may not know exactly what it is or how it works. Well, let me tell you! A DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack happens when a malicious party floods your website with traffic in an attempt to overwhelm its server and make it crash. A DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack is similar, but instead of just attacking one website at a time, attackers strike multiple targets at once. These attacks can last for hours or even days before they subside. Because there are so many websites on the Internet today—approximately 488 million as of 2019 according to Statista—the potential damage from these kinds of attacks are vast - They can disrupt businesses' operations and even harm consumers whose personal information could be stolen during such incidents.

DoS, DDoS, and other threats to the Internet

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a direct denial of service to a server, website, or application. It is achieved by flooding the target with requests or traffic until it becomes inaccessible to legitimate users and cannot provide any service.

By contrast, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are those in which the attacker uses multiple machines to overwhelm the target’s resources—for example, by sending requests at such speed that they can no longer be handled by legitimate users.

The two types of attacks are differentiated by the method used to attack a server. In a DoS attack, the attacker uses other machines to send requests; in a DDoS attack, the attacker makes use of their own resources.

What's a DoS attack?

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Typically, such an attack involves flooding the target with superfluous requests, thereby denying service to legitimate users. A DoS attack can be carried out using various methods including flooding the target with requests from multiple sources at once, overwhelming the target's bandwidth or resources (e.g., CPU time or memory), or simply disrupting any services that are dependent on said resources (e.g., mail servers).

What's a DDoS attack?

Similarly, a DDoS attack is also an attempt to make an online service unavailable to its intended users. Just on a massive scale. The goal of a DDoS attack is to overload the servers that are hosting a particular website or web application, thus making it impossible for genuine visitors to access that service.

To accomplish this goal, the attacker has to compromise many systems and use them as sources of attack traffic. A typical botnet can consist of tens of thousands of compromised devices such as home routers or IoT devices connected directly to the internet without any security measures enabled on them. Each compromised device makes requests from its own IP address, which is then amplified by one or more intermediary systems (usually called reflectors) before reaching the target server(s).

With enough source IP addresses present in the flow sent toward the target servers, these buckets get filled up with requests faster than they can drain them out again; as a result, both incoming traffic bandwidth usage and outgoing responses slow down significantly until eventually reaching saturation levels where no more requests can be fulfilled in the. These attacks are usually performed by botnets or a group of compromised computers that are controlled by an attacker. They can also be done manually if the attacker has access to many machines. given time interval (e.g., one second).

Why are they insidious?

DDoS attacks are insidious because they're hard to detect and prevent. They can be used for extortion, political purposes, ideological purposes, or financial purposes. The common thread between these goals is that they all involve an attacker trying to get something that they're not entitled to.

A DDoS attack can be performed in a variety of ways: by flooding the target with fake requests that overload its servers; by overwhelming it with too much data; or by taking control of thousands of internet-connected devices and having them all send requests at once (a "botnet").

Forms of DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks can come in different flavors. Some of the most common types of DDoS attacks are SYN flood, UDP flood, ICMP flood, and HTTP flood.

An SYN flood involves sending a large number of TCP connection requests to the targeted server from fake IP addresses. These requests will be rejected by the targeted server because they are coming from illegitimate IPs; however, the target server still needs to process each request which causes it to consume resources and slows down its network performance.

ICMP floods involve sending large numbers of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets onto a system's network interface card (NIC). This type of attack is typically used as an amplification method since these packets are small yet generate massive responses which can easily overload servers that receive them.

A UDP flood (also known as an amplification attack) involves sending spoofed packets with random source ports but fixed destination ports on a victim’s machine so that it will respond with large amounts of data back to where it thinks those requests came from – usually toward another victim’s machine.

TCP floods involve sending large amounts of spoofed requests to a server's port 80 or 25 which are both used for HTTP and SMTP communications respectively. These requests will be rejected by the targeted system because they are coming from illegitimate IPs; however, the target's server still needs to process each request which causes it to consume resources and slows down its network performance. ICMP floods involve sending large numbers of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets onto a system's network interface card (NIC). This type of attack is typically used as an amplification method since these packets are small yet generate massive responses which can easily overload servers that receive them

How to protect yourself?

To protect your website and services against DDoS attacks, you can rely on various security measures. The most common protection is a firewall. Using multiple systems that monitor network traffic and block suspicious activity is also an effective method to prevent attacks. However, this kind of protection has its limits as it can be overcome by complex types of attacks or combined with other attack vectors such as malware or phishing campaigns.

Another option would be a distributed denial-of-service mitigation service provider like Noxity. Our DDoS filter will automatically mitigate malicious traffic from the most common types of DDoS attacks without any configuration required from your side!

Why are they insidious?

DDoS attacks can be used as smoke screens. While you're busy checking your server logs and firewalls, hackers can be planting malware on your website, installing keyloggers on your users' computers, or stealing information from their social media accounts.

This is why DDoS attacks are so insidious: they can be used for extortion. Hackers can use one to threaten a company and demand money in exchange for ceasing the attack, or they may even just launch an attack on a business because they want them to pay up.

Conclusion

In summary, a DDOS attack is an attempt to disrupt or destroy an online service or website by flooding it with traffic from many sources. This can be done using botnets, which are networks of computers that have been infected with malware and controlled remotely by cybercriminals. It can also happen through other methods such as using compromised routers or sending spam emails containing malicious links. The result is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the targeted site, which may bring its servers down completely or slow them so much that they become unresponsive for legitimate users too!