By Ryan Singel April 02, 2008 | 3:26:22 PM
One out of every 50 packets on the internet is malicious junk intended simply to clog the tubes, according to a high level traffic analysis by Arbor Networks.
Distributed Denial of Service attacks or DDoSes aim to bring a site down by bombarding it with fake requests for a web page or image. It's like having 1,000 people continually crank calling a company -- the real customers can't get through.
Arbor now says those attacks account for about two percent of internet traffic, with peaks of up to five percent.
Some DDoSes are spurred by online grudges, such as the ones that occasionally target the anti-phishing site CastleCops or the large one launched against Estonian targets by Russian nationalists last year. Others are launched by cyber-criminals as part of an extortion attempt against an online retailer.
The attacks can be very effective, especially when launched using a zombie army of compromised computers known as a bot-net. But networking experts have learned some very effective ways to mitigate attacks by finding ways to filter out good traffic from the bad.
Arbor says its sensing network seeing some 1300 Denial of Service attacks a day. That network has been collecting traffic data for the last 18 months, and now is regularly getting data on almost 1.5 Tbps, a significant slice of internet traffic.
By contrast, email composes around 1-1.5 percent of internet traffic.
So, while two percent surely is an intriguing number and points to a genuine net security concern, it's hard to see cybarmageddon! on the horizon.
Some think that a really big DDoS, perhaps launched by the Chinese military, will devastate the country in an electronic Pearl Harbor. Threat Level remains highly doubtful.
But some people with power say the craziest things.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/ddos-packets-ar.html
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