We are all familiar with the disruptive consequences of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack when a website is forced offline because it has been swamped with massive levels of traffic from multiple sources. The cost in terms of lost business to companies while their website is offline can be significant.
Cyber criminals are now taking the process a step further by tying ransom demands to their DDoS attacks, threatening to keep company websites permanently offline until they pay up. In effect, DDoS attacks are coming with an invoice attached.
What are DDoS ransom attacks?
Given the stakes, it makes sense for organizations to try and learn as much as they can about DDoS ransom demands: what do they look like, how can businesses work out if their site is at genuine risk and how can they protect their online presence?
Potential DDoS attacks, usually by criminal groups, start with a test attack on a website or service. The preferred method is to send increasing levels of traffic to the site to ascertain whether it could be vulnerable to an attack. Sometimes, the site can be knocked out with a small attack (from 1-2Gb of bandwidth) or it may require a much larger scale onslaught (from 10-100Gb), depending on the robustness of the security technology the service provider hosting the site has in place.
More of the Continuity Central post from Jake Madders
