Johannesburg, 08 May 2012
The perception of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks has changed dramatically in the past 24 months. A series of successful, high-profile attacks against enterprises, institutions and governments around the world has driven home the importance of availability and the need for layered defences. These attacks have also driven home how quickly the pace of innovation has accelerated on the side of the hackers.
In today's environment, any enterprise operating online - which means just about any type and size of organisation - can become a target because of who they are, what they sell, who they partner with or for any other real or perceived affiliations. The widespread availability of inexpensive attack tools enables anyone to carry out DDOS attacks. This has profound implications for the threat landscape, risk profile, network architecture and security deployments of Internet operators and Internet-connected enterprises.
The methods hackers use to carry out DDOS attacks have evolved from the traditional high-bandwidth/volumetric attacks to more stealthy application-layer attacks, with a combination of both being used in some cases. Whether used for the sole purpose of shutting down a network, or as a means of distraction to obtain sensitive data, DDOS attacks continue to become more complex and sophisticated. While some DDOS attacks have reached levels of 100Gbps, low-bandwidth application-layer attacks have become more prominent as attackers exploit the difficulties in detecting these “low-and-slow” attacks before they impact services.
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