Hi Friends!
I heartily welcome you to our learning session. Today we develop an understanding of Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attack (or informally zombie attack).
Definition:
It is a type of attack in which an online target is rendered unavailable (i.e. no one is able to access the site, i.e. not even legitimate users).
Explanation:
Lets begin by understanding "Denial of Service" first.
In India, we have general public telephone number to contact local police @100.
Assume, a bad guy(or group), everyday, goes to telephone booth and dials this number, say between, 6:00 am to 9:00 pm. In that case, if any legitimate user wants to call police for an emergency, he/she will always find the line engaged! This is what is known as "Denial of Service".
It is easy to track down from where the call is made and hence relatively easy to prevent this attack.
Now, let's understand the "Distributed" part:
It is common sense that the police station in a district won't have just a single inbound line to cater to calls. So lets us assume that there are 200 lines available. What if, 200(or more) bad guys start making calls to the police station from different pay phones. The phone lines are bound to get flooded thereby preventing 'needy' person to reach to Police.
Here, the bad guys make a coordinated attack on the Police contact lines from different locations. And hence, the scope of this attack is major.
Now, consider the same situation, replace 'Police telephone lines' with the web site's server you are trying to use[bad guys still remain the same!]
Targets(mostly):
1. Banks
2. News websites
3. Government websites
How it is done:
#1. To launch DDos, attackers needs millions of machines as sources of request. They develop malicious software, web sites, advertisements etc. to attract users to click them.
#2: Once clicked on these links, a malicious software is installed in to the users machine, without they being even aware of it.
#3: These machines are called botnets.
Now these botnets can be used by the hacker like his own system to send requests to the target.
Symptoms:
#1: Inability of authenticated users to open web sites or Unavailability of web site
#2: Unusually slowness of the site
Categories:
There are 2 flavors of the attack:
#1: Crash services
#2: Flood services
Google them for more understanding! :)
Precautions:
To prevent your machines to be one of botnets, know which web site are you visiting(online games, adult sites, songs/movies downloading sites mostly have these flashing links), don't run any executable on your machine unless you are sure of its 'origin'. Keep your anti-virus updated with internet security turned ON.
There are a lot of things you can do. Better will be to Google it!
Is there any map where I can get the look and feel of DDos Attack:
Well this question shows the inquisitiveness of my blog's readers. And, yes I won't disappoint you all. The answer to this question is: YES
You can find the link here (or alternatively, you can copy+paste "http://www.digitalattackmap.com" in your web browser.)
Hope you find this session interesting.
Feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers!
I heartily welcome you to our learning session. Today we develop an understanding of Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attack (or informally zombie attack).
Definition:
It is a type of attack in which an online target is rendered unavailable (i.e. no one is able to access the site, i.e. not even legitimate users).
Explanation:
Lets begin by understanding "Denial of Service" first.
In India, we have general public telephone number to contact local police @100.
Assume, a bad guy(or group), everyday, goes to telephone booth and dials this number, say between, 6:00 am to 9:00 pm. In that case, if any legitimate user wants to call police for an emergency, he/she will always find the line engaged! This is what is known as "Denial of Service".
It is easy to track down from where the call is made and hence relatively easy to prevent this attack.
Now, let's understand the "Distributed" part:
It is common sense that the police station in a district won't have just a single inbound line to cater to calls. So lets us assume that there are 200 lines available. What if, 200(or more) bad guys start making calls to the police station from different pay phones. The phone lines are bound to get flooded thereby preventing 'needy' person to reach to Police.
Here, the bad guys make a coordinated attack on the Police contact lines from different locations. And hence, the scope of this attack is major.
Now, consider the same situation, replace 'Police telephone lines' with the web site's server you are trying to use[bad guys still remain the same!]
Targets(mostly):
1. Banks
2. News websites
3. Government websites
How it is done:
#1. To launch DDos, attackers needs millions of machines as sources of request. They develop malicious software, web sites, advertisements etc. to attract users to click them.
#2: Once clicked on these links, a malicious software is installed in to the users machine, without they being even aware of it.
#3: These machines are called botnets.
Now these botnets can be used by the hacker like his own system to send requests to the target.
Symptoms:
#1: Inability of authenticated users to open web sites or Unavailability of web site
#2: Unusually slowness of the site
Categories:
There are 2 flavors of the attack:
#1: Crash services
#2: Flood services
Google them for more understanding! :)
Precautions:
To prevent your machines to be one of botnets, know which web site are you visiting(online games, adult sites, songs/movies downloading sites mostly have these flashing links), don't run any executable on your machine unless you are sure of its 'origin'. Keep your anti-virus updated with internet security turned ON.
There are a lot of things you can do. Better will be to Google it!
Is there any map where I can get the look and feel of DDos Attack:
Well this question shows the inquisitiveness of my blog's readers. And, yes I won't disappoint you all. The answer to this question is: YES
You can find the link here (or alternatively, you can copy+paste "http://www.digitalattackmap.com" in your web browser.)
Hope you find this session interesting.
Feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers!
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