What Are DDoS attacks and what impact do they have?

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a cybercrime where attackers flood a server with excessive internet traffic overwhelming its capacity and rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. These attacks are not just an inconvenience but a major threat to businesses, governments, and individuals. They can lead to financial losses, operational disruptions and reputational damage.

How DDoS attacks work

A DDoS attack is carried out by a botnet. A botnet is built by a hacker who exploits a vulnerable system, turning it into a command-and-control server otherwise known as a botmaster. The control server seeks out other vulnerable systems and infects them using worms or a Trojan virus. When enough devices are infected, the hacker orders the attack sending a massive volume of traffic towards a target, consuming bandwidth, overloading resources and ultimately forcing services offline. Unlike a standard Denial of Service (DoS) attack, which originates from a single source, DDoS attacks leverage multiple systems, making them much harder to mitigate.

Types of DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks can be categorised into three primary types:

1. Volume-based attacks: These aim to consume all available bandwidth between the target and the internet. Examples include UDP floods and DNS amplification attacks.

2. Protocol attacks: These target vulnerabilities in network protocols to exhaust server resources. Common examples are SYN requests and Ping of Death attacks.

3. Application layer attacks: These specifically target web applications by sending high volumes of seemingly legitimate requests. Examples include HTTP floods and Slowloris attacks.

The impact of DDoS attacks

The consequences of a DDoS attack can be devastating. Some of the major impacts include:

• Financial losses: Companies affected by DDoS attacks suffer significant financial setbacks. Online studies reveal that a single DDoS attack can cost businesses between $.5 - $1.6 USD million in damages, including revenue loss, legal fees, and IT recovery costs.

• Operational disruptions: When a company’s servers are under attack, employees may be unable to access network resources, and customers may lose access to essential services. This can cause delays in operations, missed transactions, and service outages.

• Reputational damage: A business that frequently experiences downtime due to DDoS attacks may lose customer trust and credibility. Consumers may switch to competitors, and long-term relationships with clients may be strained.

• Secondary victims: Devices used in botnets also suffer performance issues and security vulnerabilities. Many users are unaware their devices are part of an attack until they experience significant slowdowns or system failures.

How to defend against DDoS attacks

Organisations can take several steps to protect themselves from DDoS attacks:

1. Deploy anti-DDoS solutions: Security tools designed to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks can help prevent service disruptions.

2. Use Ffrewalls and load balancers: Configuring firewalls to detect malicious traffic and distributing traffic loads across multiple servers can minimise attack impact.

3. Monitor network traffic: Establishing baseline traffic behaviour allows companies to detect anomalies that may indicate an attack in progress.

4. Implement rate limiting: Restricting the number of requests a user can send within a given timeframe can reduce the effectiveness of an attack.

5. Cloud-based mitigation: Moving critical applications to cloud-based infrastructures can help absorb excessive traffic and prevent server overload.

With attackers continuously improving their techniques, organisations must stay vigilant and implement robust security measures to protect themselves against these cyber threats.