Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): A History

• Published in: IEEE annals of the history of computing Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 44 - 54
• Main Authors: Brooks, Richard R., Yu, Lu, Ozcelik, Ilker, Oakley, Jon, Tusing, Nathan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington IEEE 01.04.2022; IEEE Computer Society; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Access control; Botnet; Computer crime; Denial of service attacks; Denial-of-service attack; Electronic warfare; Grippers; Internet; Protocols; Terrorism
• ISSN: 1058-6180; 1934-1547
• DOI: 10.1109/MAHC.2021.3072582

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks remain a persistent nuisance on the Internet. They exploit the fact that the Internet lacks centralized access control. Since this vulnerability was a core design decision of the early Internet, DDoS attacks have persisted. This article presents the technologies and tools that are used in DDoS, followed by a timeline of the major DDoS incidents. This is followed by a discussion of the primary classes of DDoS incidents and how the computing ecosystem enables DDoS. Early attacks were related to hacker culture, but their focus quickly changed to commercial exploitation. There have also been a number of political uses of DDoS, including cyberwar, hacktivism, and terrorism.