The concept of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks finally entered the mainstream public consciousness this month after assaults on the websites of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal made front page news.
Whilst these particular incidents were extremely high profile, a host of other DDoS attacks dating back to 1999 have littered the path leading up to Operation Avenge Assange.

The beginnings of DDoS attacks

The first notable use of a DDoS attack downed a University of Minnesota computer for over two days, but only a year later in 2000, sights were set higher when Amazon, CNN, eBay and Yahoo were all hit within the space of 24 hours, either slowing the sites down significantly or taking them altogether offline. Estimated losses to Amazon and Yahoo added up to approximately $1.1m.

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