Source: TH

Disclaimer: Copyright infringement not intended.

Context:

• In January 2025, Karnataka’s Kaveri 2.0 portal faced serious issues.
• This portal was launched in 2023. And It helps people to register property.
• But in December 2024 and January 2025, cybercriminals attacked this portal. And because of this attack there were severe disruptions.
• Initially it was ignored asa technical glitches but later confirmed as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

What is a DDoS Attack?

In this DDoS attack, multiple computers overwhelm a website or online service with too much traffic.

This too much traffic of data made the website crash or slow down. Which makes it unavailable to real users.

• Botnet is a group of infected computers or devices, which are used to carry out the attack.
• Main Goal is To block users from accessing the site or service.

But in this kaveri 2.0 attack, there were many Fake accounts created.

Then a huge number of requests flooded the system.

At a point, the portal received 6.2 lakh requests in just 2 hours.

And, This attack caused huge delays in property registrations and other services.

How Does a DDoS Attack Affect Websites?

• If the portal is down then services will not be available, which can lead to financial losses.
• Sometimes, These attacks hide other attacks, for example data breaches.
• Repeated attacks can create the trust deficit in the users of the site.

How to Protect Against DDoS Attacks?

1. There are many Tools that can separate real traffic from fake traffic & block them.
2. There should be the Limits for number of requests, a user can make in a short period. It reduces the chance of being overwhelmed.
3. There should be tools like CAPTCHA (those puzzle questions) to stop bots.
4. Strong security like passwords & multi factor authentication.
5. There must be awareness for people which can avoid common attacks like phishing.
   1. 1. Phishing is an attack in which cybercriminals attempt to manipulate the user to give sensitive information (usernames, passwords or credit card details).
      2. This is mostly done through fake emails, websites or messages that appear to legitimate sources.

Other Examples of DDoS Attacks:

• X (Twitter): In August 2024, Elon Musk’s company also faced the same massive DDoS attack that caused delays.
• GitHub: In 2015, GitHub was attacked by a botnet based in China which affected their services. GitHub is owned by Microsoft.

Source: TH