abhisays

Last Updated: December 25, 2009  230 views

DDoS attacks on Amazon and Walmart websites

in: Internet

DDos attacksOn a jolt to big online shopping destinations, DDoS attacks take down the websites of Amazon and Walmart. Christmas shopping took a break because of attacks on the servers of Amazon,Walmart and Expedia. Neustar is the owner of these server. It offers DNS services to many big companies like Amazon, Walmart, under the name of UltraDNS. There a drastic slowdown while surfing these websites.One time there was a complete crash also. The attack was a severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of service) which started at 4:45 p.m. PST on thursday. The source of the attack is still unknown.

However the situation is now under control. It has caused big losses for these companies as lot of traffic comes online for shopping during Christmas time. Let’s know more about DDos.

What is DDoS?

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. The main aim of these attacks it to prevent an Internet web site or online service from functioning efficiently. DDoS attackers normally target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and sometimes root nameservers. DDoS attacks are usually implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.