Businesses and ISPs must work together to fight DDoS attacks

gallery

Companies must work closely with ISP to prevent hackers from launching successful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against websites, according to an expert.

Rorie Devine, chief technology officer at online gambling group Betfair told delegates at a conference in London that businesses need to ensure cooperation with ISPs to successfully combat attacks designed to take website offline.

Most DDoS attacks are caused by hackers using botnets, large numbers of compromised computers used to send massive amounts of data to overwhelm a webserver. Devine said that in 2000, there were only six botnets in existence - now there are around 30,000.

"China, rather than Eastern Europe seems to be the new 'centre of excellence' for botnets," said Devine. "And the attacks have got a lot bigger, really!"

He said that the biggest botnet identified has 75,000 compromised hosts. He urged businesses to work with their ISPs and telcos now to ensure the problem was dealt with.

Devine said that organisations needed layered defences to protect themselves against such attacks as there was "no magic box or device" that could undertake the task by itself.

"Concurrent connections, not bandwidth, are your scarcest resource," said Devine. "You need to swim faster than your buddy."

Marino Zini, head of managed services at ISP Clara.net said that "DDoS attacks are a very real concern for any business involved in e-commerce or hosing business operations online."

"By addressing the causes of downtime, businesses can learn how best to conduct commercial activity online and plan for a reliable and secure future," he said.

Email to a friend

Print this page