What is a DDoS attack? And could my computer be a weapon?

Anonymous is a notorious hackers group which has recently caused a massive cyber-attack on a web hosting service provider which offers hosting services to a number of business site in the world. Anonymous has issued a chilling warning about an impending cyber-attack through Distributed Denial of Service through its Twitter handle. DDoS attack are the most favored and common way of launching attack on any website wherein the site is overloaded with service request to such a point wherein it ceases to function.

Its servers buckled down under the pressure and the site goes offline for the users which results in millions of dollars in loss for the business house which operates the site. Furthermore coming from such attack isn’t an easier affair as it requires a lot of time, money and expertise to bring site back to its full functionality coupled with latest security measures.

Quite recently a number of major banks and popular sites & services have taken a hit by Anonymous attack which includes Twitter, Netflix and Spotify. Anonymous has not stated at which establishment or corporate sector or even the site they will be attacking next with their DDoS attack.
Anonymous hackers group has shades of white and black

Over the years Anonymous has been able to get favorable support from the people all round the world through their good work. Anonymous hackers group has launched massive attacks against the Islamic State in the past which has left the notorious terrorist organization in online turmoil.

They launched a DDoS attack against the Australian PM website when Australia was thinking about block the malicious content on the website which was direct attack to user’s online freedom. In similar fashion Anonymous took down as many as eight Tunisian government website with DDoS attacks when they found that it was subduing the freedom of the speech of the people.

Quite recently it launched a massive cyber attack against a little webs hosting service provider which helped in bringing down the Twitter, Netflix, Spotify among others. Anonymous can easily be described as a group of activists which came together in 2003. Since November 2015 when Paris attacks took place Anonymous has declared a cyber war on the ISIS. Most of the time Anonymous takes down the website offline in order to bring focus towards the social justice or censorship present in the nation.

Huge number of popular website goes down

A number of users on global scale ranging from US to European regions are reported that they were inaccessible to the major popular site which includes, AirBnB, Pinterest, PayPal as well as PlayStation’s online service.

This particular DDoS attack was targeted on the Dyn which is a little known hosting service provider for a wide number of popular high traffic websites. Currently US authorities are investing this attack while Dyn has made a statement where it accepted attack on its servers. Dyn is working towards mitigating and monitoring the attack against its Managed DNS infrastructure.