I’ve written on this topic before. With a little motivation, practically anyone can launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to take out a website (or an entire website hosting platform).
And it’s not very expensive. For $200 (according to a blog post published by Damballa, a company specializing in detecting and combating botnets) it’s possible to rent a network of 80,000-120,000 zombie machines for 24 hours. According to the (believable) figures listed on the site, you can launch attacks between 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps: enough to cause a lot of problems.
If you’re skeptical about what these DDoS “vendors” are capable of, no worries. Some will let you try out the service free for three minutes to give you an all-powerful “I rule the Web” rush. Key the evil mastermind music…
Jean-François
photo credit: © Denis Gladkiy - Fotolia.com
Blog post originally published in French here.
Au sein de la direction sécurité du Groupe Orange, je suis en charge de la veille sécurité et de la sensibilisation à la sécurité. Franchise, optimisme et bonne-humeur sont mes moteurs quotidiens