What is a DDoS Attack? | Tempest Hosting

Within this comprehensive article, we'll quickly go over what a DDoS attack is, what it stands for and how you can even reduce, or prevent them from affecting yourself!

I'm sure at some point you've likely experienced a very slow period while using some of your favorite platforms such as Netflix, Facebook, Youtube, or other misc websites. If you're an avid internet browser, like us, then there's a high chance you've likely visited a website that may have been actively affected by a DDoS attack which is always a frustrating experience.

What Does DDoS mean?

DDoS or (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack is an illegal internet crime committed by individuals to flood the network of their desired target so much that their network becomes extremely slow, or in some cases taken entirely offline until investigated and mitigated (resolved).

Imagine checking your phone as you likely do every day for generic text messages from friends or family who you communicate with. Now imagine if thousand, or hundreds of thousands of text messages by different numbers started flooding in to your phone all at once. This would be comparable to a DDoS attack as it hinders your ability to not only use your phone more than likely but is also problematic to stop occurring.

A DDoS attack is when a user abundantly floods a network with an incredible amount of traffic, bad traffic that is.

Why would someone want to DDoS a network?

There can be many reasons or motives for an individual to intentionally DDoS a network, some of which could include a competition to slow competitors' progress or cause internal issues.

Another reason could be for monetary gain. In some situations, such cybercriminals may hold a network 'hostage' during an attack while, in return, requesting money compensation for them to release their attack on their victim.

How does a DDoS attack work?

In most cases, a DDoS attack takes place at the usage of what's referred to as a Botnet, which is a collection of machines and networks that were likely infected with ransomware and taken over by cybercriminals to then use as further leverage with larger-scale DDoS attacks. In some cases, these botnets can easily have hundreds or thousands, and even in rarer cases millions of infected computers to then use as a worker to accomplish their DDoS attacks.

Can you prevent a DDoS attack?

There are several things you can do to reduce your odds of becoming attacked, however, it's nearly impossible to assure you are 100% invulnerable to an attack, especially depending on your network service provider. So let's go over a few steps you can do to vastly reduce or possibly eliminate the odds of your network being affected by such attacks.

Be Non-Confrontational as possible

As mentioned one tactic of attacks can be solely based on a negative experience or a hostage situation with your network. It may make a minimal difference, but being a pleasant face within your community or business may help reduce your odds of becoming a victim, at least as often.

Invest in your network protection

Investing within your own network will go the largest route to mitigate and stop these attacks from ever making a difference depending on their scale. If you're experiencing these attacks we recommend you use a stable network such as Path.net which is the network we use and trust for all of our Tempest customer's machines to ensure they'll have the best possible outcome in the case their IP is the one chosen to be attacked. If you're considering improving your network or wanting to upgrade your server hosting provider check out our machine availability here!

Below is an example of a mitigated 1.5Tbit DDoS attack on the Path.net network!