Cybersecurity
Microsoft Azure Attack Shows Persistence of Blunt Hacking Tool
- Azure cloud was hit by a 10-hour DDoS cyberattack on Tuesday
- FBI said it expects DDoS attacks on US election infrastructure
Distributed denial-of-service attacks aim to flood web servers with so much traffic that they become virtually inaccessible to legitimate users.
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The recent outage on Microsoft Corp.’s cloud-computer platform demonstrated the persistence of an older, blunt-force style of cyberattack.
It’s called a distributed denial-of-service attack, DDoS for short, and it works by directing massive amounts of junk internet traffic at a target, like a website or server, to disrupt it or even knock it offline. It’s become a favorite tool of hacktivists seeking to make a statement by targeting government institutions, banks or major companies.