Which explanation most likely describes how the 2000 Yahoo DDoS attack disrupted service?

Which explanation most likely describes how the 2000 Yahoo DDoS attack disrupted service?

• A. Yahoo servers failed due to a software bug.
• B. User devices crashed due to malware.
• C. The attack exploited a hardware flaw in routers.
• D. A large number of compromised computers sent many requests to Yahoo servers, overwhelming them.

Answer: (D)

A disruption like this happens when a service is overwhelmed by traffic coming from many different devices, not because a single machine fails. In a distributed denial-of-service attack, lots of compromised devices are told to flood the target with requests, exhausting its bandwidth and processing power. For the Yahoo incident, a large number of compromised computers sent a deluge of requests to Yahoo’s servers at once, causing the service to slow down or go down for many users. This matches the idea of a flood of traffic from many sources overwhelming the system, rather than a software bug, malware on users’ devices, or a hardware flaw in routers.

A disruption like this happens when a service is overwhelmed by traffic coming from many different devices, not because a single machine fails. In a distributed denial-of-service attack, lots of compromised devices are told to flood the target with requests, exhausting its bandwidth and processing power. For the Yahoo incident, a large number of compromised computers sent a deluge of requests to Yahoo’s servers at once, causing the service to slow down or go down for many users. This matches the idea of a flood of traffic from many sources overwhelming the system, rather than a software bug, malware on users’ devices, or a hardware flaw in routers.