14 DAY TRIAL // DDOS stands for Distributed Denial of Service and is today's most common Web-based attack method, the primary weapon of hacktivists and APT (advance persistent threat) groups looking to disguise their real intentions under a cloud of HTTP requests.
The infographic below was created by Barricade, an Irish company focusing on security products for small to medium businesses, and details the basic theory of a DDOS attack.
Using industry data and some of their own statistics, the Barricade team shows us that DDOS attacks aren't to be taken lightly, affecting around 45% of all Web organizations.
Proper mitigation solutions exist to stop or minimize the impact of a DDOS attack, but they are quite expensive, while hackers can usually buy a one-week long DDOS attack for around $150 / €135.
While most attacks generally don't take down servers for more than a few hours, some attacks are well-planned and have a clear goal in mind.
As an example, you won't get anything else except satisfaction from DDOSing an online gaming server, but when you bring down a bank's servers, that usually costs the bank millions, $17 million / €15.3 million to be more exact.
Nowadays, if your online activity involves dealing with users, all companies know that at one point or another they're going to annoy "that one user" who has some Bitcoin stored somewhere and can buy a DDOS just to take revenge on your servers because you deleted one of their comments.
And if this happens, you should be very glad, because the second most common reason for a DDOS attack, besides hacktivism and petty revenge, is to distract your attention from the real attack, carried out via various other techniques like SQL injections or brute-force attacks on your login systems.
