Types of Attacks – DDoS Part 1

Photo of the earth surrounded by lines of coding to show how hackers access information
Hackers can take over the world

OK, so we now live in a world where even a 7-year-old can break into a public network and essentially hack a website. Hacking can be that easily and the information on how to do it properly is so widespread. Now is not the time to just overlook the issue and brush it off. Your precious information is leaking somewhere on the internet and you might not even know it.

Know Thy Enemy

First things first, we must better understand our enemies and attacks in order to fully protect ourselves. Last time, we went over how SQL Injections are a big part of a hacker’s attack strategy to gain access to your information. This time around we want to spend time talking about DDoS attacks in more detail.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one of the famous types of web attacks out there. DDoS occurs when multiple systems are compromised by malware and work together to cause a Denial of Service attack on a network. This can essentially shut down or severely impair your network, which is terrible for business or website traffic. In other words, you never want to run into one of these types of attacks!

DDoS Key Players

So, who are the people behind the zombie nation of botnets that seize control of computers and attack networks? Well, let’s take a closer look at who’s behind these attacks. In order to properly execute a clean DDoS attack, there’s got to be key players and a hierarchy of who’s in command. Much like how an army general has to direct his troops, a DDoS attack needs to be clearly organized in order to fulfill its purpose. The structure is broken down into 3 main roles: attacker, master, and agent.

Attacker

The attacker is just like how it sounds. This is the person that is on the ground and executing the attack. He is the main culprit for a successful DDoS attack.

Master

The guy that is right above the master on the food chain is his master. The master gives commends that the attacker typically fulfills. You can see a clear line of order forming in order to establish structure and organization.

Agent

The agent is the actual system that the attacks primarily target. The master and attacker both have to determine who the main agent will be in any attack.

Zombie or Bot

This is the computer that is under the control of the master and attacker. They are the first line of troops who go out in the cyber world and begin contacting and pinging web servers until they crash. Most people become infected with malware that can help masters and attackers gain remote control of your computer to run these attacks.

DDoS attacks are one of the most popular and famous types of attacks out there today. The reason being that they are very difficult to trace since there are so many hands in the pot that have a part of the attack. It’s really hard to trace it all back to one single source. One of the first steps you avoid to avoid is becoming a zombie or bot. Once the DDoS attackers have a group of bots gathered, this is now known as a botnet. If you don’t want any part of this botnet and don’t want your system remotely controlled, then it is important that you keep your system clean of malware. Here are some great tips to keep your system free of malware.