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Can someone explain the consequences of DDoS attacks to me? My understanding is that the worst case is that the target server goes offline for the duration of t

Can someone explain the consequences of DDoS attacks to me? My understanding is that the worst case is that the target server goes offline for the duration of the attack. If that's indeed the endgame, it seems like a lot of work on the attacker's part to disable a company's servers for a bit, but maybe I"m missing something? The article did mention servers boiling, but that was likely hyperbole unless there's a way to physically damage servers with DDoS.

Z1nfandel 10y ago
Imagine you are a news outlet. You make money by creating articles that entice people to view your website. You make money to pay your expenses by having advertisements on your website. DDoS = No Website. No Website = no users viewing ads. No users viewing ads = No income. Yes, that typically resolves quickly. Depending on your hosting agreement, you may have to pay for all the excess bandwidth that the DDoS bots used. Now imagine if you are a bank, users want to be able to access their accounts/funds/etc. How long would you remain with your bank if you frequently couldn't access your information because they were being DDoS'd.
- devicenull 10y ago
  And, depending on your transit agreements you may have to pay for all that incoming bandwidth.
alex- 10y ago
You are correct a DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service) is intended to take a target off line or simply slow down the target significantly (ideally making the service useless) While it is very unlikely to cause hardware damage it can be extremely damaging to a company or service. Service outages undermine customer trust and could drive users to your competitors. A company might also have a service level agreement with large financial costs associated with a service being down. If you don't mind the service being down, then why have it? It going down will probably have some very negative effect.

Z1nfandel 10y ago

Imagine you are a news outlet. You make money by creating articles that entice people to view your website. You make money to pay your expenses by having advertisements on your website. DDoS = No Website. No Website = no users viewing ads. No users viewing ads = No income. Yes, that typically resolves quickly. Depending on your hosting agreement, you may have to pay for all the excess bandwidth that the DDoS bots used. Now imagine if you are a bank, users want to be able to access their accounts/funds/etc. How long would you remain with your bank if you frequently couldn't access your information because they were being DDoS'd.

devicenull 10y ago
And, depending on your transit agreements you may have to pay for all that incoming bandwidth.

alex- 10y ago

You are correct a DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service) is intended to take a target off line or simply slow down the target significantly (ideally making the service useless) While it is very unlikely to cause hardware damage it can be extremely damaging to a company or service. Service outages undermine customer trust and could drive users to your competitors. A company might also have a service level agreement with large financial costs associated with a service being down. If you don't mind the service being down, then why have it? It going down will probably have some very negative effect.