Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) used to be something only talked about in cybersecurity and hacker circles, but in the past few months DDoS has found its way into the popular lexicon following high-profile attacks last year. After all, it’s hard to ignore DDoS when you can’t access your Spotify playlist or Twitter feed.
For a little background, DDoS attacks take advantage of malware-infected computers (often corrupted through spam emails, clickbait and phony web downloads) and recruit these devices as part of a botnet. This network of ‘slave’ or ‘zombie’ devices obey the command of a remote hacker to flood a website or service with fraudulent traffic requests until the service crashes.
Attacks of this kind are a favorite of cybercriminals and hacktivists because they do not require infiltration into a company’s network. Instead they are launched externally and are extremely visible to anyone visiting the site (making it perfect for cyber protests).
What’s surprising is that according to a recent survey, nearly one-fifth of companies have no DDoS protection whatsoever; and almost 40 percent are unclear on how to protect themselves from DDoS attacks!
