Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS)
A DDoS attack is when multiple compromised systems send a lot of requests or traffic to a target (ex. server, website, or other network resource) and cause the target to become paralyzed.
How does a DDoS attack occur?
ICMP Flood
Ping of Death
UDP Flood
DNS Amplification
DNS Flood
HTTP Flood
Smurf Attack
How is a DDoS attack harmful to a business?
There are three main types of DDoS attacks which are network-centric, protocol attacks, and application layer attacks.
A network-centric DDoS attack will overwhelm the targeted network resource and consume virtually all of the available bandwidth in the business's network. Such an attack can cause connectivity issues, slow down the device and even shut it down altogether. Such interruptions in function can cause the attacked company massive financial and productivity losses during the period of downtime.
A protocol-centric DDoS attack will exploit a network's protocol flaws to overwhelm the network's valuable resources.
An application layer centric DDoS attack disguises maliciously crafted data packets disguised as normal network traffic to cause a denial of service to a legitimate application.
DDoS Statistics
About
80%
of companies hit by DDoS attacks faced more than one attack.
- In a recent study by Kaspersky Lab, half of all businesses reported growth of both the frequency and complexity every year.
- Of organizations hit in 20% were very small businesses, 33% were SMB servers, and 41% were enterprises according to Kaspersky.
- The frequency of DDoS attacks have increased over 2.5 times over the past 3 years.
- The cost of a DDoS attack (according to recent security surveys) averages between $20,000 - $40,000 / hour.