Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks aim to disrupt the service of information systems by overwhelming the processing capacity of systems or by flooding the network bandwidth of the targeted business. Recently, these attacks have been used to deny service to commercial web sites that rely on a constant Internet presence for their business. The attacks differ from traditional DDoS attacks in the targeted nature and shear number of attacking hosts. Even hardened Internet companies such as the SCO group and Microsoft are not immune to attack, and historically high-profile etailers such as eBay have had their services disrupted.
The threat from the latest attacks has become greater due to the political and financial agendas of those instigating them, particularly the involvement of international organised crime in protection extortion attempts.
There is no simple solution to mitigate the risk of these attacks, but there are strategies that can help minimize the impact of a large-scale attack.
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