20 years of DDoS attacks
In July 1999, a set of computers infected with the Trin00 malware attacked and took down the network of the University of Minnesota. The episode marked the first recorded case of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. 20 years later, DDoS has evolved into one of the most serious security threats from the arsenal of both cybercrime gangs and nation-state actors. What is DDoS? or Denial of service attack define As the name implies, the goal of DDoS attacks is to prevent the target website from providing service to its users by flooding its servers with bogus traffic and starving its resources. Before engaging in DDoS, attackers typically assemble a “botnet”. Botnets are sets of computers compromised with a malware that enables the attacker, the “bot master,” to send them remote commands. After assembling their army of zombie devices, bot masters can launch DDoS attacks by commanding their botnet to simultaneously send fake requests to the target. With a strong enough...