Ddos what does it stand for

This decrease in DDoS attacks is likely to have resulted from the following:. We use cookies to make your experience of our websites better. By using and further navigating this website you accept this. Detailed information about the use of cookies on this website is available by clicking on more information.

Typical targets for DDoS attacks include: Internet shopping sites Online casinos Any business or organisation that depends on providing online services How a DDoS attack works Network resources — such as web servers — have a finite limit to the number of requests that they can service simultaneously. Although only one word separates the two, these attacks vary significantly in nature.

Each of the above DoS attacks take advantage of software or kernel weaknesses in a particular host. Remember, in a DDoS attack, the threat actor adopts a resource consumption strategy.

This strategy involves using what appears to be legitimate requests to overwhelm systems which are, in fact, not legitimate, resulting in system issues. Application Layer attacks target the actual software that provides a service, such as Apache Server, the most popular web server on the internet, or any application offered through a cloud provider.

While those resources are overwhelmed, balancers are loaded. This is the second most common form of DDoS attack. In some cases, IT and cybersecurity professionals consider protocol and application-based DDoS attacks to be one category.

DDoS attacks are known to be cunning and therefore tricky to nail down. One of the reasons they are so slippery involves the difficulty in identifying the origin. Threat actors generally engage in three major tactics to pull off a DDoS attack:. By default, IPv4 and IPv6 do not have the ability to authenticate and trace traffic. With IPv4 networks especially, it is quite simple to spoof source and destination addresses. DDoS attackers take advantage of this issue by forging packets that have bogus source addresses.

As a result, it is possible for an attacker to trick legitimate devices into responding to these packets by sending millions of replies to a victim host that never actually made a request in the first place. Attackers usually want to hide any trace of their involvement in a DDoS attack. To do this, they manipulate the default behavior of internet services so that the services effectively hide the actual attacker.

This is one of the primary reasons that attackers are attracted to a DDoS strategy. Amplification is a tactic that lets a DDoS attacker generate a large amount of traffic using a source multiplier which can then be aimed at a victim host.

Attackers have simply found a way to exploit this behavior and manipulate it to conduct their DDoS attack. Additionally, network devices and services often become unwitting participants in a DDoS attack. These three tactics take advantage of the default behavior of network resources worldwide. These resources include:. DDoS attacks vary greatly in length and sophistication.

A DDoS attack can take place over a long period of time or be quite brief:. Despite being very quick, burst attacks can actually be extremely damaging.

With the advent of internet of things IoT devices and increasingly powerful computing devices, it is possible to generate more volumetric traffic than ever before. As a result, attackers can create higher volumes of traffic in a very short period of time. A burst DDoS attack is often advantageous for the attacker because it is more difficult to trace. Botnets, which are vast networks of computers, can be used to wage DDoS attacks.

They are usually composed of compromised computers e. Threat actors can simply manipulate the tens of thousands of network devices on the internet that are either misconfigured or are behaving as designed. One of the realities of cybersecurity is that most attackers are moderately talented individuals who have somehow figured out how to manipulate a certain network condition or situation.

Even though there is often discussion about advanced persistent threats APT and increasingly sophisticated hackers, the reality is often far more mundane. For example, most DDoS attackers simply find a particular protocol. The Memcached service is a legitimate service frequently used to help speed up web applications. Attackers have often exploited Memcached implementations that are not properly secured, and even those that are operating properly.

Attackers have also discovered that they can compromise IoT devices, such as webcams or baby monitors. But today, attackers have more help. Recent advancements have given rise to AI and connective capabilities that have unprecedented potential. Like legitimate systems administrators, attackers now have voice recognition, machine learning and a digital roadmap that can allow them to manipulate integrated devices in your home or office, such as smart thermostats, appliances and home security systems.

DDoS traffic comes in quite a few different varieties. In the case of a botnet-based attack, the DDoS threat actor is using a botnet to help coordinate the attack. Understanding the types of traffic will help to select proactive measures for identification and mitigation. Click on the red plus signs to learn more about each type of DDoS traffic.

A botnet administrator, or a wrangler, uses a central server or network of servers to control the thousands of members of the botnet. The most effective DDoS attacks are highly coordinated. The best analogy for a coordinated attack involves comparing a DDoS botnet to a colony of fire ants. When a fire ant colony decides to strike, they first take a position and ready themselves for the attack. Acting under a single directive and without obvious warning, they wait for the signal and then act simultaneously.

This traffic passing between a botnet member and its controller often has specific, unique patterns and behaviors. As a result, there is a small chance for security analysts to identify this traffic and treat it as a signature to disable a DDoS attack. Atypical traffic involves using strategies such as reflection and amplification, usually at the same time.

Modern DDoS attacks combine different attack strategies, including the use of Layer 7, volumetric and even seemingly unrelated methods, such as ransomware and malware. In fact, these three attack types have become something of a trifecta and are becoming more prominent in the DDoS attack world. DDoS attacks take on many forms and are always evolving to include various attack strategies.

As an IT pro, knowing how to approach a DDoS attack is of vital importance as most organizations have to manage an attack of one variety or another over time. There have been an exceedingly large number of distributed denial of service attacks over the years.

Click on the red plus signs to learn more about each of these major DDoS attacks. The DDoS attacks on Estonia occurred in response to the movement of a politically divisive monument to a military cemetery. To Russian-speaking Estonians, the statue represented Nazi liberation, but to ethnic Estonians, the monument symbolized Soviet oppression.

Russian Estonians began rioting, and many were publicly outraged. The week of April 27, a barrage of cyberattacks broke out, most of them of the DDoS variety. Individuals used ping floods and botnets to spam and take down many financial institutions, government departments and media outlets. This attack is still regarded as one of the most sophisticated to date and is a solid example of a state-run DDoS attack. The attack appeared to be aimed at the Georgian president, taking down several government websites.

It was later believed that these attacks were an attempt to diminish the efforts to communicate with Georgia sympathizers. Not long thereafter, Georgia fell victim to Russian invasion.

This attack is considered to be the textbook example of a coordinated cyberattack with physical warfare. It is studied around the world by cybersecurity professionals and military groups to understand how digital attacks can work in tandem with physical efforts. The attack was prompted when a group named Cyberbunk was added to a blacklist by Spamhaus. In retaliation, the group targeted the anti-spam organization that was curtailing their current spamming efforts with a DDoS attack that eventually grew to a data stream of Gbps.

The attack was so compromising that it even took down Cloudflare, an internet security company designed to combat these attacks, for a brief time. The DDoS attacks that occurred during Occupy Central were an effort to cripple the pro-democracy protests that were occurring in Hong Kong in Two independent news sites, Apple Daily and PopVote, were known for releasing content in support of the pro-democracy groups.

Much larger than the Spamhaus attack, Occupy Central pushed data streams of Gbps. This attack was able to circumvent detection by disguising junk packets as legitimate traffic. Many speculate the attack was launched by the Chinese government in an effort to squash pro-democracy sentiments. This attack affected stock prices and was a wake-up call to the vulnerabilities in IoT devices. The Mirai botnet comprised a collection of IoT-connected devices. The botnet was assembled by exploiting the default login credential on the IoT consumer devices which were never changed by end users.

The attack impacted the services of 69 companies, including powerhouses such and Amazon, CNN and Visa. One of the largest DDoS attacks in history was launched against GitHub, viewed by many as the most prominent developer platform. At the time, this was the largest DDoS attack in history. However, due to precautionary measures, the platform was only taken offline for a matter of minutes. The organization quickly alerted support, and traffic was routed through scrubbing centers to limit the damage.

GitHub was back up and running within 10 minutes. AWS is well known for being a leading provider of cloud computing services.

The company, a subsidiary of the retail giant Amazon, sustained an impressive DDoS attack that kept their response teams busy for several days. The AWS teams combatted the attack, finally mitigating the threat after a three-day incursion. Most of these symptoms can be hard to identify as being unusual.

Even so, if two or more occur over long periods of time, you might be a victim of a DDoS. DDoS attacks generally consist of attacks that fall into one or more categories, with some more sophisticated attacks combining attacks on different vectors. These are the categories:. The targeted server receives a request to begin the handshake.

In a SYN Flood, the handshake is never completed. That leaves the connected port as occupied and unavailable to process further requests. Meanwhile, the cybercriminal continues to send more and more requests overwhelming all open ports and shutting down the server. Application layer attacks — sometimes referred to as Layer 7 attacks — target applications of the victim of the attack in a slower fashion.

That way, they may initially appear as legitimate requests from users, until it is too late, and the victim is overwhelmed and unable to respond. These attacks are aimed at the layer where a server generates web pages and responds to http requests.

Often, Application level attacks are combined with other types of DDoS attacks targeting not only applications, but also the network and bandwidth. Application layer attacks are particularly threatening.

Fragmentation Attacks are another common form of a DDoS attack. The cybercriminal exploits vulnerabilities in the datagram fragmentation process, in which IP datagrams are divided into smaller packets, transferred across a network, and then reassembled.

In Fragmentation attacks, fake data packets unable to be reassembled, overwhelm the server. In another form of Fragmentation attack called a Teardrop attack, the malware sent prevents the packets from being reassembled. The vulnerability exploited in Teardrop attacks has been patched in the newer versions of Windows, but users of outdated versions would still be vulnerable.

Volumetric Attacks are the most common form of DDoS attacks. Using various techniques, the cybercriminal is able to magnify DNS queries, through a botnet, into a huge amount of traffic aimed at the targeted network. In this attack, small packets containing a spoofed IP of the targeted victim are sent to devices that operate Chargen and are part of the Internet of Things.

For instance, many Internet-connected copiers and printers use this protocol. The susceptibility to this type of attack is generally due to consumers or businesses having routers or other devices with DNS servers misconfigured to accept queries from anywhere instead of DNS servers properly configured to provide services only within a trusted domain.

The attack is magnified by querying large numbers of DNS servers. It uses data collected from more than ISP customers anonymously sharing network traffic and attack information. Take a look at the Digital Attack Map. It enables you to see on a global map where DDoS attacks are occurring with information updated hourly. Protecting yourself from a DDoS attack is a difficult task. Companies have to plan to defend and mitigate such attacks.

Determining your vulnerabilities is an essential initial element of any protection protocol. The earlier a DDoS attack in progress is identified, the more readily the harm can be contained. Companies should use technology or anti-DDoS services that can assist you in recognizing legitimate spikes in network traffic and a DDoS attack. If you find your company is under attack, you should notify your ISP provider as soon as possible to determine if your traffic can be re-routed.

Having a backup ISP is also a good idea. Also, consider services that disperse the massive DDoS traffic among a network of servers rendering the attack ineffective. Internet Service Providers will use Black Hole Routing which directs traffic into a null route sometimes referred to as a black hole when excessive traffic occurs thereby keeping the targeted website or network from crashing, but the drawback is that both legitimate and illegitimate traffic is rerouted in this fashion.

Firewalls and routers should be configured to reject bogus traffic and you should keep your routers and firewalls updated with the latest security patches. These remain your initial line of defense. Application front end hardware which is integrated into the network before traffic reaches a server analyzes and screens data packets classifying the data as priority, regular or dangerous as they enter a system and can be used to block threatening data.

A firewall is a barrier protecting a device from dangerous and unwanted communications. While present defenses of advanced firewalls and intrusion detection systems are common, AI is being used to develop new systems.

Researchers are exploring the use of blockchain, the same technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to permit people to share their unused bandwidth to absorb the malicious traffic created in a DDoS attack and render it ineffective.

This one is for consumers.