20 Years of DDoS

In this article, Dave Dittrich discusses the buildup to his discovery of DDoS attacks 20 years ago.

I was inspired to start a series of articles on the early history of DDoS by a few recent events. Rik Farrow interviewed me for a forthcoming issue (Fall 2019 Vol. 44, No. 3) ofUsenix;login:magazine while I was also writing up ahistory of the early days of the Honeynet Project, which refreshed my memory on a number of events in 1999-2000. I also read this MIT Technology Review article on the 20th anniversary of the “first DDoS attack” on the University of Minnesota

It took me a little while to remember that July 22wasnotthe first of the three days that the University of Minnesota spent off-line from persistent flooding. That happened almost a month later. Nor was July 22 even thestart of the build upto that event. Now seemed like a good time to clarify this history.