DDOS and Ransomware - Desklib

Running head: DDOS AND RANSOMWARE 1
Ddos and Ransomware
Name
Institution

DDOS AND RANSOMWARE 2
Ddos and Ransomware
In the current technological era, cyber-crime has increased significantly. In recent past,
many incidences have been observed in the globe in instances where denial of service attack
(Ddos) and ramsomware have been used by criminals. Ransomware is a malicious software that
threatens to publish the victim’s information or block access unless a ransom is paid. On the
other hand, Ddos is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator makes a network or machine resource
unavailable to the intended user by overloading the system. These are some of the most
malicious attacks used by hackers or system intruders with the intensions of causing ham or
extorting the user or particularly the system user. The two have been used to cause chaos and
fear to the public and organizations.
One of the most recent Ddos attack was during the presidential campaign in the United
States in 2016. The global hacking collective launched Ddos campaign against Donald Trump.
The attackers sought to take down Trump website for his hotel chains and presidential campaign
as well as his email servers (Yan, Yu, Gong, & Li, 2016). The main aim of the attack was to
cripple Trump’s bid for white house and tarnish his brand. Later on around Election Day, they
attacked political candidates by targeting Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaign
websites. In this case, both attacks consisted of HTTP layer that lasted for only 30 seconds
(Bisson, 2016). The Ddos affected political candidates as the group had a political insight to
meddle in the states internal affairs. As a result, the election results had complains as Hillary
appealed Ddos group influence on her campaign. However, no one was caught by the authorities.
Notably, there has been a significant fear over ransomware attack globally. The most
recent example being the massive Wannacry ransomware attack that affected hundreds of
thousands of computers in Taiwan, United Kingdom and some parts of the United States. The