Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 79

FINAL WORD Bryan Hamman, Territory Manager for sub-Saharan Africa at Arbor Networks, reflects on how DDoS attacks have moved from notoriety to monetisation. Twenty years of DDoS attacks – looking back, looking forward D istributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are more popular and dangerous today than at any time in history. In 20 years, DDoS attacks have gone from being a novelty to a nuisance, and finally today they represent a serious threat against the availability and functionality of websites, online services and applications. This is according to Arbor Network’s Territory Manager for sub-Saharan Africa, Bryan Hamman, who says, “Easy to use tools and cheap attack services have widened the potential net that DDoS attacks can cast. Today, anyone with a grievance and an Internet www.intelligentcio.com connection can launch an attack. If we take a look back about 20 years or so, historic news headlines and the increasing size of attacks through the years indicate that this problem isn’t going to go away.” Looking back at some of the attacks down the years: • 1996: Internet service provider (ISP) Panix is struck by a sustained DDoS attack, affecting businesses that use Panix as their ISP. • 1996: CERT/CC – the Computer Emergency Response Team/ Coordination Center, a government- funded research and development “We’ve also seen instances when DDoS attacks are used as a smokescreen to camouflage or draw attention away from other criminal activity an attacker might be doing.” INTELLIGENTCIO 79