DDoS cyber attack can harm you

If you have been read­ing the papers this morn­ing you already know about Oper­a­tion Pay­back, a group look­ing to avenge what they con­sider attacks by the cor­po­rate world against Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Oper­a­tion Pay­back attacked and shut down the web­sites of Assange’s Swiss bank, Ama­zon, Pay­pal, Visa, Mas­ter­card, Face­book and Twit­ter. The group whose mem­bers col­lec­tively call them­selves Anony­mous, blast web­sites with a pro­gram called DDoS. And it is a threat to you as much as it is to banks, cor­po­rate giants and rock stars. Here’s a good expla­na­tion of what DDoS is about taken from Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Monitor’s story this morning.

“How does a DDoS attack work?

“Indi­vid­ual com­put­ers join together to form a col­lec­tive unit that tries to access the same web­site thou­sands of times per sec­ond. Most web­site servers aren’t designed to take that many requests at once, and they col­lapse under the pressure.

“In many DDoS inci­dents, com­put­ers are directed against their tar­get with­out the knowl­edge or con­sent of their own­ers. Oper­a­tion Pay­back appears to be volunteer-​driven, call­ing upon inter­ested peo­ple to down­load its pro­gram and point it at a cho­sen target.

“Like a fire­hose pour­ing into a kitchen sink, a high vol­ume flow can over­whelm a sys­tem quickly, caus­ing a server to crash – or a kitchen to become flooded. But in both cases, the prob­lem only lasts as long as the flow con­tin­ues. Once the fire­hose turns away, or once Oper­a­tion Pay­back tar­gets a new sys­tem, the accu­mu­lated attempts can wash through – down the drain – and leave lit­tle per­ma­nent damage.”

For now, Oper­a­tion Pay­back uses the com­put­ers of their sup­port­ers. Who knows if that will change if the group of cyber-​attackers decide they need more com­put­ers to level attacks at more than one or two sites at a time.

Where will they get those com­put­ers? The same place that other DDoS attack­ers get them, from me and you, usu­ally by hack­ing into sys­tems and through tro­jans and mal­ware. While the mal­ware on your com­puter accesses Face­book a big­glion times a sec­ond, try using your computer!

More than ever, be vig­i­lant about your virus pro­tec­tion, and espe­cially avoid open­ing email from any­one you don’t know and expect to receive email from. Even these mea­sures may not be enough, so back up of your vital data and plan how you can sal­vage your com­puter if it starts spew­ing bullets.

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