The First DDoS Attack Was 20 Years Ago. This Is What We’ve Learned Since.
By Emerging Technology from the arXiv
July 22, 1999, is an ominous date in the history of computing. On that day, a computer at the University of Minnesota suddenly came under attack from a network of 114 other computers infected with a malicious script called Trin00.
This code caused the infected computers to send superfluous data packets to the university, overwhelming its computer and preventing it handling legitimate requests. In this way, the attack knocked out the university computer for two days.
This was the world’s first distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. But it didn’t take long for the tactic to spread. In the months that followed, numerous other websites became victims, including Yahoo, Amazon, and CNN. Each was flooded with data packets that prevented it from accepting legitimate traffic. And in each case, the malicious data packets came from a network of infected computers.
Since then, DDoS attacks have become common. Malicious actors also make a lucrative trade in extorting protection money from websites they threaten to attack. They even sell their…
