DDoS Tutorial: How To Perform a DDOS Attack in 3 Simple Steps?

Introduction DDOS Attacking Tutorial

Wondering What is a DDoS attack? How DDoS attacks can hamper you by getting you offline. 

This term might be new to you but did you know-

“More than 2000 daily DDoS attacks are observed worldwide”

This completed DDoS attacking tutorial, help you explore-

• What is DDos attack?
• How Can You Identify a DDoS attack?
• What are DDoS attack symptoms
• How DDoS is performed?
• How do the attackers get involved in a DDoS attack?
• What are Different Types of DDoS Attacks
• Is it legal to perform DDoS?
• How to Perform DDoS hacking activity?
• How are DoS/DDoS attack tools categorized?
• What are Best Practices to defend against DoS/DDoS attacks?
• How to protect yourself from DDoS attacks?

So, let’s get started with this one of the best in-depth DDoS tutorials. 

Today, one of my friends Jane is planning to see a movie on Netflix. When he tried opening it, he found that he couldn't access the website properly. “Why is it taking too much time to load?” - Jane thought over. After exploring too much, we finally concluded that it is because of the DDoS attack! Do you know, websites are often attacked and might go offline due to DDoS attacks? You may wonder what is DDos or what is the DDoS attack or is it ethical to know how to perform DDoS attacks or steps for DDoS mitigation. 

This DDoS attacking tutorial is going to answer all your questions on DDoS attacks, along with an explanation of how to perform a DDoS attack and available top cybersecurity certification options. The article is a complete DDoS how-to or a DDoS tutorial for beginners.

DDoS Attacking Tutorial: What is DDoS Attack?

Endlessly looking for what is the DDoS attack? Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS, in short, is an attempt to make an online help inaccessible by overpowering it with traffic from various sources. They focus on a wide assortment of significant assets, from banks to news sites, and present a significant challenge to ensure individuals can distribute and get to significant data.

DDoS is flooding the target with a constant flood of traffic.

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Let us take an example to understand what is the DDoS attack in-depth. We have a web server that belongs to a company that sells its products over the internet. Over here, we have a couple of customers with computers that are browsing the company’s website looking at the company’s products and services. Let’s assume that someone wants to attack this company’s web server. To attack, the intruder will use the company’s computer and the program to attack the web server and flood it with data traffic to try and disrupt its service. This is just a DoS (Denial of Service) attack because the DoS attack comes from one source only. In DoS, the network or server can handle an attack from a single source as it is easier to pinpoint. The server can simply close the connection from where the attack is coming from. DoS attacks are easy to handle and are not a big problem. The problem arises when the attack comes from multiple sources simultaneously, and that is what a DDoS is! It is an attack from multiple resources all at once. Now you know what a DDoS attack finally!

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So, the intruder’s single computer can communicate with other computers around the world and coordinate an attack on the target server. Thus, the targeted server now has to deal with multiple sources (computers) instead of one. It will overwhelm the server and system resources such as the CPU and memory. It will also erupt network bandwidth. As a result, all the company’s systems will be gone to denial of service because the server is too occupied in dealing with the DDoS attack. So, the webpages these computers want to access will either be moved to the load or will become very slow in loading.

Is this a complex explanation of the DDoS attack? Don’t worry, we have a simple example for you. How about traffic jams?

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The above picture shows the traffic jam as far as you can see. We are not going to test your driving skills, but the definition of DDoS you are looking for is inside this image only!

You check your GPS traffic report, just to see that the jam stretches out for miles and there's no chance to get around it. It is highly unlikely you'll make it to the recreation center in time for your outing. That is essentially what an appropriate DDoS attack is – bunches of users (for this situation, vehicles) that are jamming up a system (the roadway) to deny you from getting to assistance (the recreation center). Normally when we talk about DDoS attacks, the asset being denied is a site and the "congested road" was noxiously brought about by a programmer. But the concept is equivalent to a congested road on the interstate.

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DDoS Attacking Tutorial: How to identify a DDoS attack?

DDoS Tutorials: DDoS Attack Symptoms

The most obvious symptom of a DDoS attack is when a site or service suddenly starts behaving lethargic, becoming too slow or unavailable. There might be a possibility that the site may start reacting gradually. But such a legitimate spike in traffic — can create similar performance issues, so need to be investigated because any kind of such interruption, contingent upon your setup, can be crushing to your business.

The symptoms of DDoS assaults include:

• The site is reacting gradually
• The site is lethargic
• The client has issues getting to the site

There are other, more specific signs of DDoS attacks that can vary depending on the type of attack.

Online Traffic analytics tools can help you spot some of these DDoS attack indication signs of a DDoS, these tools can help you get aware of :

• Suspicious amounts of traffic originating from any single IP address 
• Repeated traffic from users who share the same behavioral profile, such as device type, geolocation, or web browser version
• An unexplained surge in requests to a single page or endpoint
• Unnatural or Odd traffic patterns such as spikes at odd hours of the day (e.g. a spike every 20 minutes)

DDoS tutorials : Types of DDoS Attacks

Now we know what is the DDoS attack, let’s move further to DDoS types. DoS/DDoS attacks are basically of 3 types-

Application layer DDoS attack

Application-layer DDOS attacks are the type of attacks that target Windows, Apache, OpenBSD, or other software vulnerabilities to play out the attack and crash the server. 

Protocol DoS attack

A protocol DDoS attack is a DoS attack on the convention level. This class incorporates Synflood, Ping of Death, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. 

Volume-based DoS attack

This sort of attack incorporates ICMP floods, UDP floods, and other sorts of floods performed by using mock bundles.

“More than 2000 daily DDoS attacks are observed worldwide”

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Obviously, there's a bigger number of ways than the ol' DDoS to hinder a site! There is a large group of other mainstream apparatuses and systems to execute a DoS attack, regardless of whether DDoS is by a long shot the most widely recognized. by a long shot the most widely recognized.

• Teardrop attacks send disfigured IP addresses and larger-than-usual information bundles to the objective computer to either back them off or crash them when they attempt to understand it.
• Banana attacks make an input circle by driving every single active message an objective conveys once again into the objective, which causes more messages, and makes everything insane.
• Smurf attacks exploit misconfigured organized gadgets to send gigantic documents to each associated gadget on the double, exploding the system.
• PDoS (or Permanent Denial of Service) attacks include hacking into IoT gadgets and supplanting firmware with something degenerate or deficient.
• Nukes include sending degenerate blunder messages or operational data information to the objective, backing it off until it's solidified.
• Peer-to-peer attacks have hackers breaking into an objective system and teaching all the connected devices to attempt to connect with a solitary site or server simultaneously.
• Ping floods require you to send countless pings starting with one PC then onto the next - a basic assault and a typical device when cheating in web-based.
• Degradation-of-service attacks have botnets attack a site in "waves", so the site doesn't close down completely, just backs off as often as possible and capriciously.
• HTTP POST attacks are an out-of-date assault strategy that includes sending objective information, however, communicating it so gradually that other information needs to 'pause' for it to complete before going.
• Denial-of-Service Level 2 attacks stunt an objective's protection system from obstructing the system from the web, taking everything disconnected.
• The Ping of Death is a pernicious, deformed ping bigger than 65,535 bytes, which makes a few frameworks crash when they attempt to deal with it.
• Amplification attack controls freely open DNS to send DNS traffic to ill-equipped destinations, similar to a greater adaptation of a reflector attack.
• Slowloris (or RUDY: R-U-Dead-Yet) attempts to hoard however many associations with a site or administration as could be allowed for whatever length of time that they can, to restrain accessibility to genuine clients.
• Shrew attacks focus on the TCP (Transmission Commission Protocol) with speedy eruptions of action to misuse brake systems and hinder genuine traffic.

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DDoS Attacking Tutorial: How do the attackers get involved in a DDoS attack?

The simple answer to this question is by simply using malicious software. The attacker or the intruder will develop malware and distribute it over the internet and put it on websites or email attachments.

Thus, if a vulnerable computer goes to these infected websites or opens these infected email attachments, the malware will be installed on their computer without the knowledge of the owner that the computers have gone infected or without knowing that their computers have been recruited in an army of other infected systems to perform a DDoS attack. This army of affected computers is known as a botnet. This botnet can be even hundreds or thousands of computers that are scattered all over the world. This botnet is controlled like an army waiting to receive instructions from the attacker. The attacker gives the command to the botnetto attack on a certain date and at a certain time. Once the set time is reached the attack begins!

A DDoS attack can last for an hour or even days. It just depends upon the intender’s intent. Indeed, a review by Kaspersky Lab uncovered that one out of five DDoS attacks can keep going for a considerable length of time or even weeks, bearing witness to their refinement and genuine danger presented to all organizations.

The impact of the attack is that during that, no workers can get access to the network resources, and on account of Web servers running eCommerce locales, no buyers will have the option to buy items or get help. The dollar figure fluctuates, however organizations can lose $20,000 every hour in case of an effective attack.

DDoS attacks are surprisingly cheap and easy to initiate, that is, one can easily slow down any website anywhere in the world by buying its cheap services. Slow and independent sites are at particular risk. Because the relative flood of traffic can be taken offline as they don’t tend to have resources or infrastructure to defend themselves. Intruders take advantage of this vulnerability by using DDoS attacks to influence political events and some opposing media.

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DDoS Attacking Tutorial: How DDoS is performed?

DDoS tutorials, Stage 1: Creating the Botnet

To create a botnet, a hacker needs an approach to assume responsibility for a great many gadgets — these could be PCs, cell phones, or IoT gadgets, for example, webcams or brilliant fridges. There are many ways the hacker could discover and assume responsibility for these gadgets. For instance, they may compose an infection that proliferates and progressively assumes control over an ever-increasing number of PCs. Or on the other hand, they may locate a particular IoT gadget with known helplessness (for instance, poor default login security) and construct a bot to examine the web and hack however many of those gadgets would be prudent.

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DDoS tutorials, Stage 2: Controlling the Botnet

As the programmer assumes responsibility for every gadget, they'll accomplish something so it will comply with any directions the programmer sends to the gadget. (For instance, installing a small program on it.) There are a couple of various methodologies the programmer can utilize (customer server model, P2P model dependent on advanced endorsements, and so on.), yet the final output is the equivalent — the hacker can give an order and every one of the gadgets in the botnet will do whatever the hacker educated them to do.

DDoS tutorials, Stage 3: Executing the Attack

Once the hacker has a huge number of gadgets available to him no matter what, he can execute the DDoS attack. There are a couple of various kinds of DDoS attacks (read them below). However, the essential thought is the equivalent: flood a web server with a larger number of solicitations than it can deal with. The aggressor will normally inquire about the objective site cautiously to distinguish a shortcoming to abuse, at that point create a solicitation that will focus on that powerlessness. At last, the assailant will train their zombie PCs to execute that solicitation (more than once). Here's a model: Let's say John's botnet has 100,000 gadgets in it. He gives an order to the botnet to send an HTTP solicitation to example.com once every second. That is 60 visits for each moment times 100,000 gadgets. That signifies 360 million visits for every hour or 8.6 billion visits for every day. That is definitely more than most web servers are intended to deal with. If the assault was arranged well, the webserver will be over-burdened and any genuine individuals who attempt to visit the webpage will get a blunder message. DDoS assault achievement!

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“You can buy a week-long DDoS attack on the black market at $150 only”

DDoS Attacking Tutorial: Is it legal to perform DDoS?

In principle, no. Practically speaking… yes…

Essentially, playing out a DoS attack on any association or site is viewed as a wrongdoing, although not a horribly terrible one. In most cases, it'll get you about a year in jail and a hefty fine. If the DoS attack you have committed something genuine (like, say, you are one of the people at police headquarters), at that point different charges could be hurled over those. There have been individuals who've contended that it ought to be a genuine type of dissent, yet all around, getting discovered DoSing will bring you inconvenience in the US and UK.

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However, practically speaking, the legitimateness of DoS attacks is not yet decided. To be specific, governments can and have utilized DoS attacks previously as a type of digital fighting, and associations can target themselves with DoS attacks to test server limit as well as their cybersecurity group. So while you shouldn't do DoS attack in any case, simply realize that getting captured will likewise get you in a difficult situation.

DDoS Attacking Tutorial: How are DoS/DDoS attack tools categorized?

There are a number and different types of tools that are explicitly designed for to launch DoS/DDoS attacks

DDoS Tutorial: Types of DDoS Tools

Low and slow attack tools

As the name implies, these types of DDoS attack tools are used for low volume of data and operate very slowly, specifically designed to send small amounts of data across multiple connections in order to keep ports on a targeted server open as long as possible. Low and slow attack tools continue to take up the server's resources until it is unable to maintain additional connections.

Application layer (L7) attack tools

Application layer (L7) attack tools are used to target layer 7 of the OSI model, where HTTP. Using this a malicious actor can launch attack traffic that is difficult to distinguish from normal requests made by actual visitors.

Protocol and transport layer (L3/L4) attack tools

Protocol and transport layer (L3/L4) attack tools utilize protocols like UDP to send large volumes of traffic to a targeted server, such as during a UDP flood and are often ineffective individually. 

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DDoS Tutorial:  Best 10 DDoS Attacking Tools

Here is the list of top 1o best DDoS  tools that  you can go for-

1. LOIC (Low Orbit ION cannon) 
2. DDoS Attacks or Solarwinds
3. PyLoris.
4. DDoSIM (DDoS Simulator) 
5. RUDY
6. HTTP Unbearable Load King (HULK) 
7. HOIC (High Orbit ION cannon) 
8. GoldenEye.
9. Tor's Hammer
10. OWASP HTTP POST

After covering the best DDoS Attacking Tools, this DDoS Attacking Tutorial is going to help you with the best practices to defend Dos/DDoS attacks. Before we move further, let’s quickly go through the JanBask Training Cybersecurity training options that can add feather in your career.

What Are Best Practices to defend against DDoS Attack?

DDoS attacks take a variety of forms, mitigating them requires a lot of niche knowledge and a variety of practices. In this DDoS Attacking Tutorial, next, we are going to talk about some best practices or tactics for stopping DDoS attacks-

• Know your network's traffic & understand your organization’s normal traffic pattern
• Create a Denial of Service Response Plan
• Make your network more resilient
• Practice good cyber hygiene & leverage best security practices
• Scale up your bandwidth to absorb a larger volume of traffic
• Take advantage of anti-DDoS hardware and software
• Moving to the cloud can mitigate DDoS attacks
• Know the symptoms of an attack and optimize accordingly
• Outsource your DDoS protection services

DDoS Attacking Tutorial: How to protect yourself from DDoS attacks?

“1 out of 3 downtime incidents are attributed to DDoS attacks”

DDoS attacks can cause server blackouts and money-related loss and spot stress on IT experts attempting to bring assets back on the web. The correct location and aversion techniques can help in DDoS mitigation before it increases enough energy to topple organization systems. Moreover, contact your network manager to affirm whether the administration blackout is because of support or an in-house network issue. Network administrators can likewise monitor traffic to affirm the nearness of an attack, distinguish the source, and relieve the circumstance by applying firewall rules and potentially rerouting traffic through a DoS protection service. Additionally, contact your ISP to inquire whether there is a blackout on their end or whether their server is the target of the attack and you are a backhanded injured individual. They might have the option to educate you on an appropriate matter with respect to the activity to help with DDoS mitigation.

There is another option to protect yourself from DDoS attacks, get knowledge of how cybersecurity is affected. It is said, “To beat the devil, you need to become the devil”. But yes, the positive one! If you want to learn more strategies like this, you can learn ethical hacking, where you can have a great comprehension of what is the DDoS attack, how to perform DDoS attack, steps to help with DDoS mitigation, in short, it will be a complete DDoS how happy learning!

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Final Thoughts On DDoS Attacking tutorials

So this was the complete DDoS how-to guide, hope you now have a clear understanding of what is DDoS attack and how to perform a DDoS attack. With the above, we have gained in-depth knowledge on what is DDoS, what is DDoS attack, types of DDoS attacks, how to perform a DDoS attack, and solutions for DDoS mitigation. If you have been looking for a DDoS tutorial for beginners, you can sign in for our Cybersecurity self-learning module. Also join the JanBask Training Community to get professional support from expert professionals and career guidance.

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