The denial-of-service (DoS) attack, is a common attack used by those who want to make a point or make money, by disrupting the availability of websites and web services. In simple terms the threat actor finds a way to flood a system with malicious network traffic to overload network infrastructure and the servers, which whilst being attacked prevent legitimate users access.
The impact of this attack can be multiplied by using a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where unsuspecting machines across the internet are infected with DDoS malware, which then all contribute to the generation of the malicious traffic. If you infect enough machines your DDoS attack can grow enormously. This DDoS by botnet and malware has been gaining popularity with threat actors over the past year or so.
These attacks can have an enormous effect on businesses, organisations and individual users. So efforts to prevent this type of attack are good news for all of us:
As part of an incident response plan we have created, and mange, for a high profile client, we are using CloudFlare to defend against DDoS and DoS attack among other possible issues.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
Further Reading
Tsunami of junk traffic that broke DDoS records delivered by tiniest of botnets | Ars Technica
Man gets two years in prison for selling 200,000 DDoS hits • The Register
