# Ddos DDoS, short for Distributed Denial of Service, is a cyberattack method that floods a target website or server with junk traffic from thousands of hijacked machines until it collapses under the load. First documented against a University of Minnesota system in August 1999, DDoS became the signature protest weapon of hacktivist groups like Anonymous and LulzSec through the late 2000s and 2010s before rising to headline-grabbing scale in the Spamhaus and Dyn attacks. ## Overview A DDoS attack works by hijacking a large number of computers, called a botnet, and directing them to send simultaneous requests at a single server or network until the flood saturates its bandwidth or exhausts its processing capacity, blocking legitimate users from reaching the service[5]. The 'distributed' part is what makes the tactic hard to shut down: because the traffic comes from thousands of scattered sources at once, blocking a single IP address does nothing meaningful, and defenders have to filter the noise from real requests at scale[2]. Common attack methods include SYN floods, UDP floods, and DNS reflection, where attackers trick a DNS server into sending a large reply to a spoofed target address[7]. Paid 'stresser' or 'booter' services take a different approach, letting customers rent botnet firepower by the hour with a credit card, often running on hacked Internet of Things devices with default passwords[6]. That mix of easy tools, cheap services, and poorly secured hardware is why the technique kept scaling up rather than getting solved. ## How It Spread DDoS jumped into mainstream news in February 2000, when back-to-back attacks took down Yahoo, Amazon, Buy.com, CNN, eBay, E*Trade and ZDNet within days of each other, with Yahoo losses estimated near $500,000 and Amazon losses near $600,000[3]. Three years later, Oregon prosecutors charged 21-year-old Anthony Scott Clark of Beaverton with commanding a 20,000-computer botnet against eBay in 2003, exploiting a Windows vulnerability to build his army through a password-protected IRC server before pleading guilty to intentionally damaging a protected computer[4]. The mid-2000s pushed DDoS into geopolitics and hacktivism. Estonian government sites were pounded by attacks traced back to Russia in 2007, similar assaults hit Georgian, Azerbaijani and Russian government targets in 2008, Anonymous adopted the Low Orbit Ion Cannon that same year for Project Chanology's Scientology attacks, then reused the model through Operation Payback against the RIAA and MPAA in September 2010, Operation Avenge Assange against PayPal, Visa and MasterCard after those companies cut off WikiLeaks, and LulzSec's brief 2011 spree against Sony Pictures and the CIA website[3]. March 2013 raised the ceiling. Dutch web host CyberBunker allegedly retaliated against anti-spam group Spamhaus with a 300 gigabit-per-second flood, at that point the largest publicly announced DDoS attack on record and, according to Spamhaus chief executive Steve Linford, big enough to slow global internet traffic, with five national cyber-police forces investigating[1]. On October 21, 2016, an attack on DNS provider Dyn knocked Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Tumblr and other major services offline across the US East Coast, powered by hijacked cameras, DVRs and home routers infected with IoT botnet malware that made the assembled botnet far bigger than any traditional PC-based one[2]. ## How to Use A typical DDoS attack has three parts: an attacker, a control channel, and a botnet of hijacked machines. In the 2000s the control channel was often a password-protected IRC server the bots would connect to and wait for orders from, as in the Anthony Scott Clark eBay case where 20,000 machines sat on IRC waiting for the launch command[4]. By the mid-2010s, paid 'stresser' services took the setup mainstream: Lizard Squad's Lizard Stresser, launched in late 2014, let paying customers rent DDoS firepower against any IP with a credit card, running on thousands of hacked home routers protected only by factory-default passwords[6]. Basic hacktivist tools like the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) took a different route, with each participant opting in through a graphical interface, which Urban Dictionary flags as a 'bad choice' because it means the attackers are not unwitting bots and can be traced back[7]. ## Cultural Impact By the mid-2010s DDoS was mainstream news outside the security beat. The 2013 Spamhaus incident got wall-to-wall coverage in outlets like the BBC, with Spamhaus chief executive Steve Linford quoted saying the scale was unprecedented[1]. Security blogger Brian Krebs, whose site was itself knocked offline by Lizard Squad's stresser service in early 2015, traced the botnet back to hacked home routers in his follow-up investigation, cementing DDoS as a running story in tech journalism[6]. The 2016 Dyn attack pushed the message further: a single DNS provider outage could take down Twitter, Spotify, Reddit and Tumblr at the same time, and Krebs used the moment to warn about the growing pool of poorly secured Internet of Things devices being conscripted into botnets[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Ddos? DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, a cyberattack that overwhelms a target server with junk traffic from thousands of hijacked machines until it cannot serve legitimate users[5]. ### Where did Ddos come from? DDoS tools first appeared in the late 1990s, and the technique became public news through big commercial attacks in the early 2000s, including the 2003 eBay incident that led to one of the earliest publicly reported DDoS convictions[4]. ### What does Ddos mean? DDoS is short for Distributed Denial of Service, describing an attack coordinated from multiple compromised computers against a single target[7]. ### How do you use Ddos? DDoS attacks are illegal in most countries. Historically, attackers built botnets of hijacked computers and directed them at a target via a control channel like an IRC server, as in the 2003 eBay case that carried a maximum 10-year sentence[4]. ### Is Ddos still popular? DDoS is still one of the most common cyberattack methods. The 2016 Dyn attack showed how IoT-powered botnets could take down major services like Twitter, Spotify and Reddit at scale[2]. ### What was the biggest DDoS attack? The March 2013 Spamhaus attack, allegedly launched by Dutch host CyberBunker, hit 300 gigabits per second and was reported by the BBC as the largest publicly announced DDoS on record at that point[1]. ### Who invented DDoS? No single person invented DDoS, but the first publicly available tools, Trinoo and Tribe Flood Network, appeared in 1997 and 1998, and the earliest well-documented attack targeted a University of Minnesota computer in August 1999[3]. ### What is a botnet? A botnet is a network of computers hijacked with malware and controlled remotely by an attacker. Lizard Squad's 2014 stresser service, for example, ran on thousands of hacked home routers with factory-default passwords[6]. ### What is Lizard Squad? Lizard Squad is the hacking group behind Lizard Stresser, a paid DDoS-for-hire service launched in late 2014 that ran on hijacked home routers, per Brian Krebs's investigation after his own site was hit[6]. ### What happened during the Dyn attack in 2016? On October 21, 2016, a DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn took down Twitter, Spotify, Reddit and Tumblr across the US East Coast, powered by hijacked cameras and DVRs infected with IoT botnet malware[2]. ### What was the Spamhaus attack? In March 2013, anti-spam group Spamhaus was hit with a 300 Gbps DDoS after blacklisting Dutch web host CyberBunker, and the BBC quoted Spamhaus chief executive Steve Linford calling the scale unprecedented[1]. ## References 1. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21954636]() 2. [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/ddos-on-dyn-impacts-twitter-spotify-reddit/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/ddos]() 4. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/28/ebay_bots_ddos/]() 5. [https://www.cert.org/tech_tips/denial_of_service.html]() 6. [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/01/lizard-stresser-runs-on-hacked-home-routers/]() 7. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ddos]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/ddos Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library