BLUF

These articles cover some common attacks that impair the availability of systems and how these attacks work.

DDoS

A Distributed Denial of Service is an attack that seeks to disrupt the availability of a service by overloading it with information so that it crashes or at least slows down so much that it affects the services provided.  These attacks start by gathering the necessary computing power needed to attempt this kind of attack by creating what is called a botnet.  A botnet is a network of hundreds, if not thousands IoT devices that have been infected with malware and act accordingly to the malware that was implanted. Sometimes it will be sending lots of packets to a specific target, trying to take down their system. 

Ransomware

Ransomware is an attack that infects someone’s system and locks them out of it, and demands that the owner pay a fee in order to gain access back into it.  It is one of the most common attacks that are seen today because people are easily scared and are willing to pay to get rid of the problem. According to Kurt Baker, there are three main types of ransomware: encrypting ransomware, screen lockers, and scareware. Encrypting ransomware is where attackers will encrypt your system and tell you to pay them to decrypt it.  Screen lockers bar you from accessing the system and display a countdown encouraging you to act or pay them to fix the issue. Scareware uses pop-ups to trick the victim into downloading malware that will be used for the ransomware attack. 

Conclusion

These articles explain what some common attacks are and how they work. These kinds of attacks will only be used more commonly and get more intricate as the years go on, so security needs to evolve at a pace that exceeds the bad threat actors trying to do harm.

References

Baker, K. (2025, March 4). What Is a Ransomware Attack? | CrowdStrike. Crowdstrike.com. https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/cybersecurity-101/ransomware/

Cloudflare. (2025). What is a DDoS attack? Cloudflare; Cloudflare. https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/what-is-a-ddos-attack/