The DDoS problem should be of major concern to any company which relies on an Internet presence for its business or for its reputation. Prolexic Technologies works with hundreds of businesses and has been at the forefront of mitigating all varieties and sizes of DDoS and related network attacks since 2003.
Compromised PCs, or "bots," are formed into groups called "botnets" and are used as weapons by cyber-attackers to launch various forms of cyber attacks. These attacks range widely from DDoS to identity theft and clandestine intelligence gathering operations. Prolexic currently tracks over 4000 command and control servers (C&Cs) which manipulate the botnets.
During Distributed Denial of Service attempts, attackers launch attacks using different techniques including HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP, SYN Floods, UDP Floods, DNS Request Floods, GET Floods, and others. The attack components are often used in combination, and range in size from a few hundred megabits per second (Mbps) to over 80 gigabits per second (Gbps). Increasingly sophisticated attacks are based around application requests at Layer-7.
DDoS attackers have a significant advantage over their targets. The concentrated power of even a small botnet of 20,000 computers can take down over 90% of Internet sites. The general term to understand the power relationship is asymmetric warfare.
There is always one or more underlying motivation(s) for a cyber-attack. These motivations may be commercial, competitive, political, or other. The attacks are not limited to a specific sector but are increasingly targeting broader, unrelated types of online businesses and organizations. Prolexic has observed, detected, and fought attacks launched upon global banking institutions, eCommerce sites, airlines, NGO's, local, and federal government assets.
Prolexic currently detects, fights, and mitigates thousands of DDoS attacks each year, and continually observes new, crafted and specialized DDoS attacks. These attacks look and act more like normal user traffic than ever before, so Prolexic develops counter-measures to combat them. These tools are unique to Prolexic, and combine human-guided mitigation and proprietary technologies with the best commercially available equipment.
Prolexic is capable of dealing with all of today's DDoS threats, addressing the needs of Prolexic's customers, and will continue to lead and develop innovative new methods to successfully mitigate today's and tomorrow's attacks
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