Last Friday, US residents were unable to access Spotify, Twitter, Reddit, SoundCloud and Netflix. Much to the horror of many American residents, it was the result of a distributed denial of service attack or DDoS for short.
For several hours, all these sites were down and they seem to have one thing in common. They all use Dyn as a service provider. The attack on Dyn seems to have been planned thoroughly and it will quite difficult to tell if another attack will happen again.
The idea of another DDoS attack is bothersome for a lot of people. Not only did the attack made it difficult to stream movies and listen to music, it actually crippled a lot of small businesses and services that are heavily reliant on the internet.
Furthermore, several reports believe that DDoS attacks will happen more. Hackers are finding more ways to get better and some can now use any mobile device to attack websites and servers. Even worse, if hackers are able to time their attacks during important events, the effects of it will be disastrous.
How To Prepare For The Next DDoS Attack
Using multiple service providers can be a good way to prepare for another DDoS attack. For example, a user who is unable to access Facebook for the meantime can use Twitter instead. If a user's laptop suddenly went offline, try connecting using a different device like the mobile phone, or switch from Wi-Fi to 4G instead.
It is also good to have a local back-up by configuring the settings on the cloud service providers like Google Drive, DropBox, and Microsoft Live to automatically sync all files with the local folders. Lastly, if there is a need to use a DDoS corrupted site, try using a different DNS (Domain Name System) server on the device.
