DDoS Attack Leaves Website Slow

A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attack against my webhosting company has left my website slow as mud the last few days, in an blog post last night they said that this was now cleared up but according to the speed of this site I guess they were wrong.

A DDoS Attack is the technical name for a hacker leading an army of 'zombie' computers against his chosen foe... 

This DDoS Zombie Army is in fact a bunch of home computers (preferrably on broadband) who have downloaded and installed a trojan or backdoor program. Similar to a computer virus these infect your computer unknowingly but instead of damaging your computer it places remote control (and credit card transaction / banking details) of your computer in the hands of the Hacker.

The DDoS Zombie Army is then instructed to request information from a particular site or server or server cluster. Then instead of processing and using the information the Zombie Army just discards it and requests again. In fact they each individually just keep requesting data.

Sort of like a flash mob all turning up at the Bank at the same time and demanding all their money. Sooner or later there are too many people making requests and the bank (website) closes down.

In a DDoS Attack such as is happening at the moment there are not enough Zombie computers to halt the system but there are enough to slow the systems and websites down for legitimate users.

Now this DDoS Attack is not against me or my website but on someone in the same webhost company on a machine close to mine.

Here is the RSS feed from my host company explaining the situation according to them:

Major ddos this morning has left many sites (web and mail), inaccessible. The attack is being addressed and seems to be dying down on its own. We apologize for this disruption of service and any updates will be forthcoming. While this issue is addressed and resolved, there might be a few straggling domains/sites that we’re working on.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact our support team.

Happy DreamHost Up-All-Night yet again Team!