Quote:
Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube
Okay, so what's the benefit to the people doing it? Just to be jerks?
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Denial of Service attacks (DoS) affect numerous organizations connected to the Internet. They distrupt normal business operations, are practically impossible to prevent and are costly and time-consuming to handle. It pays to spend some time understanding the way a DoS inicident might affect your organization and how you might handle the situation.
One way to start thinking about your ability to withstand and respond to DoS attacks is to consider why such incidents occur. The common reasons include the following:
Extortion via a threat of a DoS attack: The attacker might aim to directly profit from his perceived ability to disrupt the victim’s services by demanding payment to avoid the DoS attack.
Turf wars and fights between online gangs: Groups and individuals in engaged on Internet-based malicious activities might use DoS as weapons against each others’ infrastructure and operations, catching legitimate businesses in the cross-fire.
Anti-competition business practices: Cyber-criminals sometimes offer DoS services to take out competitor’s websites or otherwise disrupt their operations.
Punishment for undesired actions: A DoS attack might aim to punish the victim for refusing an extortion demand or for causing disruption to the attacker’s business model (e.g., spam-sending operations)
Expression of anger and criticism: Attackers might use the DoS attack as a way of criticizing the affected company for exhibiting undesirable political, economic or monetary behaviors.
Training ground for other attacks: Attackers sometimes might target when fine-tuning DoS tools and capabilities for future attacks, which will be directed at other victims.
Self-induced: Some downtime and service disruptions are the result of the non-malicious actions that the organization’s employees took by mistake.
No apparent reason at all: Many victims never learn why they experienced a DoS attack.
Handling a DoS incident involves operating under stressful circumstances, often with limited resources and time. To learn how to prepare for dealing with a DoS attack and what to do if you’re caught unprepared, see my Network DDoS Incident Response Cheat Sheet.
http://blog.zeltser.com/post/1077568...ervice-attacks
Incredible live site showing cyber attacks worlwide
