A smarter and more damaging distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) has affected 32 percent of Internet and 18 percent of all data centers in the United States.
The U.S.-based security firm Prolexic Technologies reported this month that DDoS attacks affected 32 percent, while a study conducted by the security-focused Ponemon Institute said that it affected 18 percent of outages in government data centers. Each outage is worth $630,000.
Additionally, Ponemon's report showed that DDos attacks are now considered the third largest cause of outages.
DDoS attacks are done by two or more individuals or bots to make a machine or a website inaccessible to its intended users. It is not really performed to steal any personal and confidential details.
Though it is not as serious as getting your private information stolen, it has caused so much trouble to a lot of Web administrators, users, and even the government.
Reuters reported Wednesday that the largest DDoS attack was noted in February, where in a number of sites have been attacked consecutively.
One of the sites in the receiving end is the virtual currency Bitcoin, where hackers took down its ability to process payments. The URL shortening service Bitly Inc. also reported a DDos attack on its website in February.
On Feb. 20, another site, the Web registration firm Namecheap, said it was temporarily overwhelmed by a DDoS attack on 300 websites it registers.
Aside from the attack on websites, DDoS was also believed to be behind the heart of attacks blamed on Russian hackers against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. Experts would like to believe that a DDoS attack is behind the disruption of communications in at least one major government website amidst the current stand-off between Ukraine and Moscow, too.
Jag Bains, DOSarrest's chief technology officer, told Reuters that the once simple DDoS attack were growing smarter, advanced, and distracting that even a small attack damages so much.
DOSarrest is a Seattle-based firm that aids private and government companies in protecting their websites.
