Attack on Availability happens all the time, with some of the most notable attacks being DDos attacks and ransomware. These attacks are done to prevent services from being available to people and to find exploits in services while they are down. Cloudflare recently had defended against a massive 7.3 tbps DDos attack, and in 2014 a group called Lizard Squad carried out a DDos attack on Christmas day targeting Xbox and Playstation networks, knocking out the services for two days.

Meaning of Attack on Availability
Attack on Availability is when a security breach is being carried out by targeting services that are used regularly, to prevent access or cause disruption so that they can’t be used and using different methods on attacking these services. One of the popular ways that services are attacked is by Denial-of-service (DDos), DDos attacks are done by overloading services by flooding it with traffic to slow the service down or to outright crash the service and the people using it. DDos attacks are very common and are always happening, to the point that people will outright DDos on video games to get an advantage or to ruin people’s fun. Ransomware Attacks are another common type attack that is used by holding information or services for a paid ransom. Ransom attacks can happen in a lot of different ways since it’s just someone or a group gaining access to private and secured information, Phishing emails are a common way that they are carried out since the attacks are usually directly targeting people.

Some Recent Attacks

In May of 2025 Cloudflare had blocked the biggest DDos attack to ever be recorded, the attack only lasted for about 45 seconds and was about 7.3 Tbps, that comes to about 37.4 terabytes in 45 seconds. Cloudflare being attacked is very common since they are one of the largest networks that is used by lots of businesses and regular people, Cloudflare will often do DDos reports on attacks that they experience and they will go into details on how the attacks were carried out and where they came from. Cloudflare reported that the attacks bombed “21,925 destination ports of a single IP address owned by a customer” (Yoachimik, 2025), the attack also had originated from a 122,145 IP addresses across 161 countries, with majority of the attack coming from Brazil and Vietnam.
I also wanted to give a brief talk about a hacker group called Lizard Squad that had carried out a massive DDos attack against Xbox and Playstation network on December 25, 2014. Not much has been talked about how they carried out the attack because of Microsoft and Sony, but they managed to take down the servers for two days straight ruining Christmas for a lot of people. A lot of their group members had been arrested after that attack in different countries because they bragged about it on the internet, their age range was 13+, and apparently they are still doing attacks under different names.

The Implications of the Attacks

The attacks on corporations and users give the implication of being vulnerable, it gives that warning that companies and users weren’t as prepared and ready for any type of threat to attack them. Ransomware is something that is very concerning because you are being blackmailed for a ransom to not have your private information stolen or a company’s secured information is now in someone else’s hands, and there’s little to be done to get out of that situation. DDos attacks are the same way with its own concerns, because DDos attacks can shut people out of a service leaving it vulnerable to any malicious attacks or even affecting important work happening in organizations, because of Lizard Squad’s attack the gaming industry made a massive change in their cybersecurity protections.

Conclusion

“Attack on Availability” is a very concerning thing because of the possibility of a DDos attack shutting down services for a certain period of time, or being a victim of Ransomware and not being able to do much to get out of the situation. One of the major parts of the Triad is being able to always have availability to services so that people can always have it when they need it, so setting up precautions and planning for future DDos attacks should always be a priority to protect the organization and its users. The main way to avoid Ransomware is by teaching cyber safety so that people can watch out for potential phishing emails, scam text, and sites that may not be safe to access on an organization account.

References

Yoachimik, O., & Pacheco, J. (2025, April 27). Targeted by 20.5 million DDoS attacks, up 358% year-over-year: Cloudflare’s 2025 Q1 DDoS Threat Report. The Cloudflare Blog. Retrieved June 28, 2025, from https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-threat-report-for-2025-q1/

Yoachimik, O. (2025, June 19). Defending the Internet: How Cloudflare blocked a monumental 7.3 Tbps DDoS attack. The Cloudflare Blog. Retrieved June 28, 2025, from https://blog.cloudflare.com/defending-the-internet-how-cloudflare-blocked-a-monumental-7-3-tbps-ddos/