DDoS Attacks Are Back
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are certainly nothing new. Companies have suffered the scourge since the beginning of the digital age. But DDoS seems to be finding its way back into headlines in the past six months, in thanks to some high-profile targets and, experts say, two important changes in the nature of the attacks.
The targets are basically the same — private companies and government websites. The motive is typically something like extortion or to disrupt the operations of a competing company or an unpopular government. But the ferocity and depth of the attacks have snowballed, thanks in large part to the proliferation of botnets and a shift from targeting ISP connections to aiming legitimate-looking requests at servers themselves.
In fact, said Andy Ellis, CSO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies, the botnets launching many of today’s DDoS attacks are so vast that those controlling them probably lost track of how many hijacked machines they control a long time ago. (Listen to the full interview with Ellis in The Long, Strange Evolution of DDoS Attacks.)
Ellis has been watching the trend from a pretty good vantage point. Many people use Akamai services without even realizing it. The company runs a global platform with thousands of servers customers rely on to do business online. The company currently handles tens of billions of daily Web interactions for such companies as Audi, NBC, and Fujitsu, and organizations like the U.S. Department of Defense and NASDAQ. There’s rarely a moment — if at all — when an Akamai customer IS NOT under the DDoS gun.
Complete articles :www.computerworld.com
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