Security Threat of a DDoS Attack
More importantly, in many cases a DDoS attack is merely designed to distract from other criminal activity, such as data theft or network infiltration. The attacker keeps its target busy fighting off the DDoS attack, to then sneak in a piece of malware.
Who would carry out a DDoS attack? As it turns out, the answer includes many different types of bad actors such as cyber-criminals or disgruntled employees. Perpetrators execute DDoS attacks for a variety of reasons, such as extortion, revenge, or politics.
Protocol DDoS attacks target the networking layer of the target systems. Their goal is to overwhelm the tablespaces of the core networking services, the firewall, or load balancer that forwards requests to the target.
In general, network services work off a first-in, first-out (FIFO) queue. The first request comes in, the computer processes the request, and then it goes and gets the next request in the queue so on. Now there are a limited number of spots on this queue, and in a DDoS attack, the queue could become so huge that there aren’t resources for the computer to deal with the first request.
DDoS attacks are measured by how many bits (binary digits) of traffic they send at the target per second—for example, a small attack might measure only a few megabits per second (Mbps), while larger attacks might measure several hundred gigabits per second (Gbps), or even more than one terabit per second (Tbps).
It’s important to note that not all DDoS attacks are bandwidth focused. For example, network protocol attacks are low bandwidth with many packets per second (PPS).
More Info: attack attack genre
Who would carry out a DDoS attack? As it turns out, the answer includes many different types of bad actors such as cyber-criminals or disgruntled employees. Perpetrators execute DDoS attacks for a variety of reasons, such as extortion, revenge, or politics.
Protocol DDoS attacks target the networking layer of the target systems. Their goal is to overwhelm the tablespaces of the core networking services, the firewall, or load balancer that forwards requests to the target.
In general, network services work off a first-in, first-out (FIFO) queue. The first request comes in, the computer processes the request, and then it goes and gets the next request in the queue so on. Now there are a limited number of spots on this queue, and in a DDoS attack, the queue could become so huge that there aren’t resources for the computer to deal with the first request.
DDoS attacks are measured by how many bits (binary digits) of traffic they send at the target per second—for example, a small attack might measure only a few megabits per second (Mbps), while larger attacks might measure several hundred gigabits per second (Gbps), or even more than one terabit per second (Tbps).
It’s important to note that not all DDoS attacks are bandwidth focused. For example, network protocol attacks are low bandwidth with many packets per second (PPS).
More Info: attack attack genre
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