DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to make a server or network resource unavailable to its intended users, usually by temporarily or indefinitely interrupting or suspending the services of a host connected to the internet. Unlike (DoS) “Denial of Service attack”, a (DDoS) “Distributed Denial of Service Attack” uses many computers and internet connections, in other words, more than one and often thousands of unique IP addresses.
Types DDoS Attacks
The goal of volume based attacks is to saturate the bandwidth of the attacked site. These attacks include: UDP Floods, ICMP Floods, and other spoofed-packet floods.
This attacks consumes server resources or the resources of intermediate communication equipment, such as firewalls and load balancers.
The application layer attacks are those that are comprised of seemingly legitimate and innocent requests. The purpose of this type of attack is to crash the web server. Examples of these attacks are: Slowloris, Zero-day DDoS attacks, DDoS attacks that target Apache, Windows or OpenBSD vulnerabilities.
Prevention
DDoS attacks are performed by networks of computers known as botnets. Botnets are created when malicious users distribute malware that can turn your computer into a bot (enlist your computer to form part of their botnet without your consent.) This will cause your compute to perform automated tasks over the internet without your knowledge.
Do not be tricked into downloading malware!
Attackers can enlist your computer in a botnet by: