These letters mean Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of
Service. They are important, because last Friday was not so
happy for people trying to get into Amazon, Twitter, GitHub,
Heroku, Paypal, Etsy, Spotify, Soundcloud, Reddit, Crunchbase,
Netflix, BBC, CNN, The New York Times, HBO Now, Elder Scrolls
online, Yelp, Freshbooks, various Squarespace sites, Pinterest,
Twilio, NHL.com, Quora, Business Insider, Zillow, Box, tableau,
GrubHub, Overstock, Walgreens, Ruby Lane, Pixlr, PicMonkey, Ticketfly, and ironically,
outageanalyzer - plus more.
DDoS originate when
multiple compromised devices or systems are used to target a
single computer system. Victims of a DDoS attack are both the
end targeted system and all systems maliciously controlled by
hackers in the distributed attack. The incoming traffic flooding
the victim originates from potentially hundreds of thousands to
many millions of devices, including PCs, cameras, DVRs, and many
smart devices, such as thermostats, etc. The wave of outages
move from the East coast of the US to the West coast as the day
progressed. It was reported that 145 thousand security cameras
among other devices were part of the attackers causing the
outages.
Incidentally, a way
you can prevent your devices from being part of the problem is
easily solved by changing the default password. Unfortunately
many connected devices, such as thermostats, refrigerators,
etc. do not provide a means to change the default password.
Caveat Emptor.