What is DDOS ATTACK?

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic. This flood of traffic can come from a large number of sources, which makes it difficult to stop the attack by simply blocking one IP address. An analogy to understand a DDoS attack is imagining a group of thousands of people trying to enter a building through a single door at the same time. This would create a bottleneck and prevent anyone else from entering or leaving the building. In the same way, a DDoS attack floods a server with so much traffic that it becomes overwhelmed and unable to respond to legitimate requests. One verifiable fact about DDoS attacks is that they have been on the rise in recent years. According to a report by NETSCOUT, there were over 10 million DDoS attacks worldwide in 2020, an increase of 20% from the previous year. An example of a high-profile DDoS attack is the 2016 attack on Dyn, a major Domain Name System (DNS) provider. This attack disrupted internet services for millions of users by targeting Dyn’s servers with a massive amount of traffic, causing widespread outages for popular websites such as Twitter, Netflix, and Spotify. Overall, DDoS attacks are a serious threat to online businesses and organizations, as they can result in downtime, financial losses, and damage to reputation. It is important for companies to have robust cybersecurity measures in place to defend against these types of attacks.