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Attacks

What is Distributed Denial of Service?

An attack that overwhelms a service with traffic from many sources simultaneously, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

Also known as: DDoS

DDoS attacks use distributed resources to flood a target with more traffic than it can handle.

Types

  • Volumetric: Overwhelm bandwidth (DNS amplification, NTP reflection)
  • Protocol: Exploit protocol weaknesses (SYN floods, Ping of Death)
  • Application: Target specific services (HTTP floods, Slowloris)

Scale

  • Modern DDoS attacks exceed 1 Tbps
  • Botnets of millions of devices can be rented for ~$50/hour
  • Cloud-based amplification increases attack volume 50-100x

Privacy Connection

  • DDoS attacks are used to silence privacy advocates and independent media
  • Tor entry nodes face constant DDoS attempts
  • Privacy-focused services need robust DDoS protection
  • Cloudflare and Bunny CDN provide DDoS protection for privacy-respecting sites

Related Terms

Botnet

A network of compromised devices controlled by an attacker, used for DDoS attacks, spam, cryptocurrency mining, or distributed credential stuffing.

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