A denial of service attack, commonly referred to as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of a network or website by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic. In this type of attack, the attacker seeks to make a service or resource unavailable to its intended users by targeting the infrastructure or system hosting it.
During a denial of service attack, a large number of compromised devices, often referred to as a botnet, are used to flood the target network or website server with an overwhelming amount of data requests or connections. The server becomes overloaded with this influx of traffic, leading to its limited or complete incapacity to handle legitimate user requests effectively. As a result, the targeted website, service, or network experiences a significant slowdown or even a crash, rendering it inaccessible to its users.
Denial of service attacks can be executed in various forms, including ICMP floods, SYN floods, UDP floods, and HTTP floods, among others. These attacks can be launched from multiple sources simultaneously, making it challenging to identify and block the malicious traffic completely.
The objectives behind denial of service attacks can range from malicious intent to activism, with motivations like causing disruption, damaging reputation, or even extortion. Organizations and websites often implement mitigation techniques and employ advanced tools to detect and prevent these attacks, ensuring their systems are resilient and can withstand such assault on their availability and functionality.
