There's been a surge in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks throughout the course of this year, and the attacks are getting more powerful and more disruptive.
DDoS attacks[1] are launched against websites or web services with the aim of disrupting them to the extent that they are taken offline. Attackers direct the traffic from a botnet army of hundreds of thousands of PCs, servers and other internet-connected devices they've gained control of via malware[2] towards the target, with the aim of overwhelming it.
An attack can last for just seconds, or hours or days and prevent legitimate users from accessing the online service for that time.
SEE: Security Awareness and Training policy[3] (TechRepublic Premium)
And while DDoS attacks have been a nuisance for years[4], the prospect of corporate, e-commerce, healthcare, educational and other services being disrupted at a time when the ongoing global pandemic[5] means more people are reliant on online services than ever could create huge problems.
But a new threat intelligence report by cybersecurity company Netscout suggests that's exactly what's happening, as cyber criminals have launched more DDoS attacks than ever before. The company said it observed 4.83 million DDoS attacks in the first half of 2020, up 15% compared with 2019.
"When looking at cyber threats historically, as the footprint of available attack surface increases, so do attacks against them. This is also true in the DDoS world," Richard Hummel, threat intelligence lead at Netscout, told ZDNet.
And while there are sometimes political or financial motivations behind conducting DDoS attacks, in many cases those controlling the campaigns just launch them because they can.
"The motivation behind these attacks are varied from 'because they can' to 'showboating' or even