Today Twitter and Facebook sites both had a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack and are still coping with the aftermath as I type this blog.

What is the cause for these outages? Unfortunately, your computer is one of the major causes of these outages. A DDOS attack is created by an errant piece of code called malware installed by unsuspecting computer users via email attachments or software downloads or even simple browsing. Once this malware is on your computer it sends a homing beacon to a master server saying i am here and ready for instructions.

The master server then initializes instructions and says to these systems go this internet address repeatedly, and the website that is the target is then flooded with so many requests it cannot respond and then crashes.

I have personally been involved in a DDOS attack and as a network administrator for a internet services company 8 years ago it was very severe and took several hours to finally clean up the issue.

So what can be done. A few simple steps can help to prevent these malware applications form being installed on your computer:

- install and update your anti virus software. A free anti virus can be downloaded from www.avg.com
- do not open attachments or emails from sources unknown
- update your operating system, typically windows, apple, or Linux.

These few simple steps can help prevent DDOS attacks i the future and keep your computer running smoothly.

Have a great week!

Thanks
Abel