So as we all know, malware are a really big headache to deal with when it comes to computers. But thereâs another threat to our ability to post on tumblr or watching carrot farming tutorials on youtube: Denial of Service attacks.
This threat has, just like malware, pretty much always been present since the dawn of internet. But only recently has it reached Really Bad Levels. As usual, no prior computer science education needed.
A Denial of Service attack, often abbreviated as DoS, occurs when a large amount of junk data is sent to a server or network to deal with. Basically overloading the server so it can no longer be used by anyone. Think of it as if you entered a store and stand in line to make your purchase, but the customer currently making their purchase is spamming the poor cashier with useless questions like âdo you know what the time is?â, âdo you have this shirt in a pink shade?â, âwhat time do you close on December 13th next year?â, etc. For hours. Literally until the store closes, and you have to leave the place without having made the purchase. In a computer you will see this as an error of being unable to connect to the server after waiting a long time for a site to load.
Today itâs hard to pull off a DoS attack by yourself - back in the day when the internet wasnât very fast and servers didnât have a lot of capacity, one person could cause servers going down using only one computer, comparable to how stores usually only had one cash register. But today servers and networks have a much higher capacity to deal with connection requests, just like how many stores have multiple checkouts. And itâs also fairly easy to stop a DoS in progress by blocking the source IP address from connecting or through other means. Therefore DoS attacks have evolved into whatâs known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
A DDoS is a coordinated attack from multiple sources (IP-addresses) thatâs simultaneously sending a large amount of junk data to the same target server or network, so that instead of the store having one annoying customer taking their sweet time at one cash register, itâs instead flooded by literally thousands of identical annoying customers occupying the cash registers. But how can this be done? Well, one of the most common ways isâŠ
In order to achieve a large scale DDoS you of course need a large amount of devices capable of sending requests to the target server. I briefly wrote in this post about a few types of malware, where trojans are often responsible for zombifying your computer into a botnet, where it is remotely controlled to perform tasks you have no idea about. One of the first and most famous malwares capable of performing DDoS attacks was the worm MyDoom, that back in 2004 spread through pirated music sites like Kazaa or email, and ended up infecting so many machines that it was estimated to be the consumer of 20 - 30% of the worlds internet traffic during its spreading. It was programmed to on specific dates initiate a DDoS from the infected machines to the sites www.sco.com followed by www.microsoft.com, and successfully brought down those sites to their knees, prompting other large sites at the time to temporarily or permanently change their addresses, just in case they were the next target in the devastating MyDoomâs code.
Today we have a serious security issue with whatâs known as the Internet of Things (IoT), these are non-computer devices connected to the internet, such as surveillance cameras, baby monitors, routers, even refrigerators and cars. Security for these appliances are usually nothing more than decorational or even non-existant. Due to people not deeming it important to have their IoT devices secure - after all, thereâs no personal data or files stored in a baby monitor so whatâs there to protect - itâs ripe for the taking when it comes to new members of botnets. IoT devices usually come with a standard admin login username and password, such as âadminâ with â12345âł as password. Very few people change this. For example, the routers of a Danish internet service provider TDC once delivered their routers all with the same standard username and password, which means that if you only knew what that was, you could log in to every TDC-provided router in Denmark unless the user had changed it, which very few did.
This type of shit security led to the largest DDoS attack in history, caused by the Mirai botnet that infected millions of IoT devices, mostly cameras, using nothing more than a list of standard usernames and passwords to break into them. The attack was carried out against Dynâs servers, which are a DNS service (basically responsible for upholding addresses to sites, not unlike a phone book - this is where you go after entering an address, which your browser checks up with the DNS service handling that address and translates it to the IP of the site) to many large companies such as Spotify, Netflix, Reddit, Amazon and many more, which means these sites and services were unavailable or extremely slow for several hours during Friday and Saturday on October 21 - 22 (as of 2016 when this post was written. A new record was detected on February 14th of 2023).
Denial of Service as a service
So Why are these attacks occurring? Whatâs the gain? Well thereâs usually a few reasons behind them. it could be for monetary gain, either to beat the competition or to extort. For example, say that you have an unscrupulous seller of fireworks, and to hog all the customers, they launch a DDoS attack against their competitors just days before new years, ensuring that nobody can order from the competing sites. DDoS attacks can also be in extortion, threatening to keep up the attack unless the victim pays.
Revenge or simply as a form of activism have also been reasons behind DDoS attacks. Itâs rumoured that users from WikiLeaks were behind the Mirai botnet attack as a protest against Julian Assange being deprived of an internet connection. YeahâŠ
DDoS attack kits are bought and sold quite openly, usually under the disguise of âstress testing softwareâ for legitimate testing on how much traffic a service or server can handle, or you can even pay like a subscription to have a DDoS carried out against a desired target for X amount of money per month. Digital crime as a service is rapidly expanding and with the introduction of ransomware, it even surpassed the illegal drug trade in revenue. This means your devices are gold mines if accessible to criminals and the reason why security for even the seemingly most insignificant device is so important.
DDoS attacks are usually very tricky to stop, but the thing you can do as a mere user is making sure botnets donât become strong enough to carry out such large scale attacks. Always change the standard password for your devices and keep your systems updated and protected by antivirus software if possible.
Thatâs all I had to write about this for now. Itâs a very complex and intricate subject really, but I hope I managed to convey at least some basics in a way that made sense and also not 300 pages long. But if you have any questions, my inbox is open. :)
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