# DDoS attack types

## What is a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS)?

It's a malicious cyber attack in which a large number of compromised (infected with malware/virus) computers, often referred to as "botnets," are used to overwhelm a target system such as a network or website with an excessive amount of traffic. The malicious actor's goal of a DDoS attack is to make the targeted service unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with so much traffic that it becomes unable to handle legitimate user requests, which causes a disruption of service.

The attacker first gains control over a network of compromised devices. These devices can include computers, servers, and more which are usually infected with malware. Once the attacker has control over this botnet, they orchestrate a coordinated attack.

The attacker then directs the botnet to send a massive volume of traffic towards the target system or network. This flood of traffic can come in various forms, such as HTTP requests or even legitimate-looking requests that are specifically designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the target's infrastructure.

As a result, the infrastructure becomes overwhelmed by the flood of incoming requests. In turn, legitimate user requests struggle to get through because the resources are tied up in handling the malicious traffic.

## How DDoS attacks impact services

As the target system's resources get consumed by the attack, its performance starts to degrade. It may become slow, unresponsive, or even crash completely. In severe cases, the targeted service may go offline entirely, resulting in a denial of service for legitimate users. That's where our GLAD services come in to mitigate such attacks to your infrastructure. On the following pages, we have listed various DDoS attacks that can potentially affect services. To help mitigate such attacks, we offer an Anti-DDoS product: **GLAD**, our Global Low-Latency Anti-DDoS solution. It offers a proprietary set of custom tools to detect, intercept, and deflect impending attacks.

## Related topics

* [DDoS category attack types](/anti-ddos/ddos-attack-types.md)
* [About GLAD: i3D.net's Anti-DDoS solution](/anti-ddos/about_antiddos.md)


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