Cybersecurity Report: Analysis of DDOS and Ransomware Threats

This report provides an analysis of Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) and ransomware attacks, two significant cyber threats. It explores the nature of these attacks, including the methods used by perpetrators and the impact on victims. The report highlights real-world examples such as the DDOS attacks during the 2016 US presidential campaign and the global Wannacry ransomware attack, detailing the consequences and the challenges in tracing the attackers. It emphasizes the motives behind cybercrimes, such as causing harm, disrupting services, and extorting money. The analysis underscores the importance of understanding these threats to improve cybersecurity measures and protect against future attacks. The report also references relevant literature to support the findings and conclusions regarding the nature and impact of cyberattacks.

Running head: DDOS AND RANSOMWARE 1
Ddos and Ransomware
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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

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ransomware that started just like malicious website encrypted all the files on the infected
computers and demanded an average of $300 in Bitcoin which is untraceable digital currency to
unlock user’s data. The malware first affected Spanish phone company Telefonica, many
hospitals in the U.K, as well as automakers and shippers (Liska, & Gallo, 2016). The ransomware
infected the files in the computers which demanded $300 upon retrieval of any data. According
to the U.S Homeland security advisor, the attack affected over 300,000 victims in over 150
countries including few companies in the U.S (Snider & Weise, 2017). To date, nobody has ever
been caught by the authorities linked to the cyber-attack.
To sum up, cybercrime motives are to harm and ruin the reputation of a victim, firm or
organization causing either harm mentally or physically, cause loss indirectly or directly. Both
the Ddos attack in the United States caused significant agony to the affected and almost threw
the country in political turmoil. The malware also if not dealt with could cause untold harm
globally. The consequences are always dire given that the attackers make it impossible for them
to be traced as indicate in the two examples.

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References
Bisson, D. 2016. The 5 most significant Ddos attacks of 2016. Tripwire.
Liska, A., & Gallo, T. (2016). Ransomware: Defending against digital extortion.
Snider,M. & Weise, E. 2017. How U.S. dodged a bullet in Friday's massive global ransomware
attack. USA Today.
Yan, Q., Yu, F. R., Gong, Q., & Li, J. (2016). Software-defined networking (SDN) and
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in cloud computing environments: A survey,
some research issues, and challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1),
602-622.