What are DDOS Attacks and Why Should You Care?

A DDOS or distributed denial of service attack is a type of cyber-attack that renders a websiteoffline or unavailable by overwhelming it with fake traffic from multiple sources. According to Atlas threat report, more than 2,000 DDOS attacks are carried out daily. A lot of websitesare targeted by these attacks and if you have a website, then there is a strong possibility that you too might have experiencedsuch an attack.

How Do DDOS Attacks work?

The mechanism behind a DDoS attack is quite simple.Attackers need a huge number of computersto launch the attack. The more computers they have, the worse the attack. Since, they don’t have a large number of computers ready at their disposal; they try to infect other PCs with malware so that they can remotely use those PCs for the attack, without the user of that PC not even knowing about it.

Once they have control over a large number of PCs,they form a network of them called“botnets”.Botnets can be used as avirtual army to launch an attack. Historically speaking, some botnets have had millions and millions of PCs in their network.

Botnets then generate a huge amount of traffic to take a web service down. The attacks can be generated in different of ways, such as sending more connection request than a server can handle.

Why Should I Care?

No one is safe from aDDoS attack, from home users to small, medium and large businesses. Even big companies and Fortune 500 companies like Twitter, Spotify, Reddit and PayPal have fallen victims to these attacks.

Who Are the Potential Targets?

Online Gamers

If you are an online gamer, chances are you might come under attackor you may have already witnessed an attack while playing a multi-player game.Recall the time when you were just when you were about to win and you faced a massive delay or lag by which allowed your opponent to kill you and win.

Since these types of attacks are sold cheaply in black markets as a service,the attacker might have paid someone to attackyou. The DDOS attack first throttled your internet speed by sending huge amount of request to your IP/server. This slows down your reaction time and gives your opponent the opportunity to kill and defeat you.

Ecommerce Stores

Ecommerce websites are another important target of DDOS attacks. Since they have high public visibility, they are usually a prime target of DDOS attacks. Just a few minutes of down time can lead to potential loss in revenue and a bad impact on the brand image. Also, payment processing is delayed because of these attacks.

Some competitors who can’t beat you at service will resort to these cheap tactics to damage your reputation and image.

P2P File-Sharing Network

P2P file-sharing websites and networks are a great resourceto share data and information. These sites and networks are also a target of DDoS attacks. Researchers suggest that peer-to-peer networks are being hijacked to launch increasing number of DDOS attacks. In these attacks, large number of P2P software are requested to accept a file from the intended target of DDOS attack, allowing the computerson the network to be used illegally to attack.

How Can You Save Yourself from Becoming a Victim of DDOS Attacks?

With the increase adaptability and wide availability of technology, it has become easier to protect yourself from falling victim tothese attacks. There are lots of tools out there which can protect you and your website from being compromised by DDoS attacks.

One such tool to protect yourself and your business is a VPN, since a premium VPN service has the capacity to stand a DDOS attack of upto 400 Gbps. PureVPN is an industry leader when it comes DDOS mitigation. It can withstand the DDOS attack of upto 480 Gpbs.

PureVPN also hides your real IP address and all the communications are filteredthrough DDOS mitigated servers to your pc.

One other tool that can be used is Incapsula. Incapsula is a Security CDN that makes any website safer, faster and more reliable.

With the above mentioned tool in place to protect your website, you can rest assured that even the worst of DDoS attacks cannot get the best of your security.

Guest article written by: Bilal is a fun loving and ambivert guy. He loves to conduct research work and write about new development in cyber security and privacy.  You can connect with Bilal on twitter @bilalmk95.