Distributed Denial of Service ( DDoS ) attacks are usually done by individuals calling themselves “hacktivists.” Their purpose is to crash a website server by overwhelming it with activity by “bots” and is generally an aim with a political purpose. These attacks can take up 111gbps to 179gbps, and in April of 2013, took 144 million packets-per-second. If the “hacktivists” are against a company’s stance on a specific issue or multiple issues, the “hacktivist” will attack in an attempt to show opposition and illustrate the company’s weakness. A “hacktivist” may also attack a company, such as a bank or finance company, which they believe makes money off of the downtrodden of society. Some hackers have used DDoS attacks for extortion in an attempt to make companies pay a designated amount before their servers can go back online. A DDoS attack can even be carried out by hackers who deem the company in competition with another company the hacker supports. It is also beginning to look like ...
