Sites of colleges and universities are constantly subject to DDOS attacks. But who does it? do students really need to drop sites?”
Hacking is a major vice of this generations young adult. Usually, it starts with the basics like hacking Wi-Fi password or a Facebook or Instagram account for pranks or just to be mean to another person. However, depending on what is at stake the hacking becomes more sophisticated. The average man’s question is usually “is this website safe?” when dealing with special information.
What is a DDoS attack? You know, yea?
DDoS is an abbreviation for Distributed Denial of Service. It is a category of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infested with a Trojan, are used to target a single system producing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
Victims of a DDoS bout are usually both the end targeted system and all systems maliciously used and controlled by the hacker.
Several types of distributed denial-of-service attack techniques exhaust or saturate the targeted system in diverse ways. There are three common types of attacks: protocol, volumetric and application attacks.
Each of these can stay as long as minutes to months and can range from an inconspicuous amount of traffic to more than the highest on record, reported at 1.35 terabits per second.
Who makes DDoS attacks on College and Universities
A critical and thorough analysis has shown that major cyber-attacks on college and university sites are primarily people on the inside. This suggests that the perpetrators of such acts are students or even staffs of the university.
A student who would not study or write an essay for an exam but would rather spend time on the computer or decide to hack the system sometimes to protest the exams, rebel against the system or even to get the exam questions beforehand.
Accrediting cyber-attacks is often a difficult task but JISC (a not-for-profit digital support service for advanced education) studied a lot of DDoS attacks on universities and concluded that indistinct patterns show that these occurrences happen during term-time and working days and drops when students have a break.
According to John Chapman, head of security operations at JISC, this style could indicate that the perpetrators are students or staff, or other people acquainted with the academic cycle.
There are different approaches a hacker could use. The hacker may decide to Command-and-control server or make use of Botnet and bots to gain control of the system and weaken functionality.
Why makes DDoS attacks on College and university sites?
An assault to a person usually stems from a feeling of wanting to hurt someone. When a college or university site is attacked there may be a number of reasons considering that most times the perpetrators are student or staff.
One school of thought is of the opinion that the occurrences are a means of settling grudges of which in time past there have been cases of such.
For example, the University of London survived 15 years of the attack until September 2015, when an ex-staff member started a cyber-attack against the senior manager. According to him, the senior manager was responsible for dismissal, so he attempted to take the organization down in the process.
Sometimes grudges may be held by a group of students, however not all are hackers, therefore some of the buy DDoS in order to make the attack.
It took combined forces of law enforcement agencies around the world to take down ‘Webstresser’. This is a DDoS for hire service which illegitimately traded kits that were used for overpowering networks. With this taken down, there was seemingly a decline in DDoS outbreaks in universities and college sites
Other times, the attacks are done just for the fun of it or the credit to a hacker. One instance was when the attacker launched an attack in order to disadvantage a rival in online games, in this case, the DDoS attack against a university network which took place across four nights in a row was found to be specifically targeting halls of residence. The hacker was doing this just for the fun of it.
Who benefits from DDoS attacks on College and University sites?
Cyber attacks are done for different reasons and in the end, there are different benefits. However, the benefits accrued mostly depend on the motive for the initial attack.
For most strikes, the perpetrator gets to quench the thirst for revenge. If the perpetrator buys DDoS, the seller gets paid and also takes credit for it.
Since the agenda for the hack is fulfilled the organizer of the campaign is satisfied and if the organizer is the hacker get such a person gets to take credit for is work although most times on the dark web. These occurrences usually put the college and university sites in a precarious position as they are vulnerable and open to other forms of attack on the system.
