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Friday 30 September 2011

DDoS Attacks

By Kevin Abrahams


The term DDoS attack may be one that you are unfamiliar with but it can have grave consequences to your dedicated server and your website. If you are new to the term, it stands for Distributed Denial of Service and anyone who has an online presence should be aware of it. If you have a website, you need to be reliable and offer great service to customers and this is why these attacks are bad for business.

Before you worry about why these DDoS attacks are bad for your website, it may be helpful to know how they work. A collection of compromised computers are formed together, into what is referred to as a botnet and they are utilized by cyber attackers. The aim of the cyber attackers is disrupt online usage and cause disruption. In more serious cases of a DDoS attack, it may be used for identity theft purposes or to gather intelligence. The fact that these attacks can be very serious indicates the importance of dealing with them.

However this can be easier said than done as it does not need a lot of computers to take down a large section of the web. It is believed that a group containing fewer than 20,000 corrupted computers can pull down an area akin to 90% of all websites. This means your website can easily be at risk of a DDoS attack.

A huge issue surrounding the impact of the DDoS attack is the fact that even a small number of users can cause a great deal of damage. It is believed that a group of between 15,000-20,000 computers has the capability to severely disrupt up to ninety percent of all the websites that can be found online. The size of this threat emphasises the importance of being aware of DDoS attacks.

Some people may think that they are safe from DDoS attacks because they are not a commercial site or provide little concern with regards to political or commercial gain. The issue is that DDoS attacks are not always motivated for these gains and sometimes hacking and cyber attacking other sites is a goal in itself for the perpetrators. This means that every website owner needs to consider the dangers of these attacks and learn what they can do to secure their dedicated server.




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