2011: The Year of the DDoS

In 2011, there was a significant increase in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, with a 700% rise noted by CloudFlare. These attacks can be categorized into two main types: political and financial. Political attacks aim to suppress information for political reasons, targeting sites covering human rights abuses, election fraud allegations, and other sensitive topics. Financial attacks are similar to online extortion, with ecommerce sites being threatened with an attack unless a ransom is paid. CloudFlare has been working to keep attacked websites online and support the internet's promise of enabling anyone with ideas to reach a global audience.