The DDoS smoke screen: why restoring uptime may be your first mistake

One night last November the traffic graphs at sports-betting firm, 1win, went vertical. Hours later the lines flattened, LEDs flicked green, ticket closed. End of story—until forensics showed that, while terabits of junk battered the perimeter, someone tip-toed off with 96 million customer records. The fireworks were loud enough that nobody heard the vault door click.

The culprit? Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

What was once digital vandalism—flood the pipe, claim bragging rights—has evolved into outright misdirection, hogging every console and CPU cycle while the real break-in unfolds elsewhere.

DDoS Attacks Today

Carriers that once saw two DDoS incidents a day now log hundreds, and 44% of these attacks are over in under five minutes. Blink and ...