Political protests result in DDoS attacks

There are lots of motives for organizing DDoS attack on websites. Some of them have commercial undertone, sometimes the attacks are organized to avoid the information flow online. This can happen at a time of war conflicts when the attackers are aiming to make government-owned web resources inoperative and keep the citizens unaware of what’s happening around. When there are conflicts between the government and the opposition, DDoS attacks are widely implemented either. But lately, the attacks have started to be used even more commonly when the group of people is protesting against political repressions, against the involuntary closure of popular web resources, against online censorship and control, like Anonymous do. Some guys, however, are arranging attacks just for fun.

Practically any kind of website can become a target for an attack. There are different technologies used by Internet abusers. So, in theory it’s possible to deactivate any website, big or small. The most primitive kind of attack is pouring the victim with auto generated online traffic. In case the victim cannot afford renting a high capacity web server, the website is quickly giving up under traffic amount that cannot be handled. Other kind of attacks are smarter and aiming to provoke the activation of server security system. The price of the attack is usually very affordable, so anyone can order such service from a hacker group.

Very often the users are taking part in an attack as a volunteers. The Anonymous group encourages people to support their principles and provides them with a software for ddosing. But let’s take a look at most notable protests that caused launching of attacks all over the world. Few years ago in Iran, people protested against unfair elections and political persecutions. The same happens in Russia and CIS countries where the opposition leaders are oppressed. One more notable protest has happened in Estonia when the authorities have decided to dismantle the monument to soviet soldiers that struggled against Germany in fortieth. The Russian activists and nationalists have organized lots of powerful and long time attacks on Estonian Prime Minister’s website, national bank website and a list of other resources. Some motives of the attacks don’t go public, for example DDoS attacks on Twitter, Pirate Bay etc. These attacks demonstrate that even huge portals can suffer from web abusers and the only way to strike back and stop DDoS attacks is applying to a special online service for proper security.