DDoS attacks and human behavior

Even as systems are increasingly hardened against the typical arsenal of cyberwarfare, hackers (often in the employ of criminal organizations and – perhaps – even states) are exploiting gaps in the human behavioral response to changing technology. A recent attack, using the peer-to-peer client DC++, massed over 150,000 unique IP addresses to swarm Prolexic Technologies. While DC++ patched the vulnerability a while back, the failure of end users to upgrade their software makes network ecologies persistently precarious. The problem may lie with the updating mechanisms themselves (OSes and browsers now generally update automatically, while 3rd party software does not), but certainly also owes to the fragmented integration of human and network behavior.

[via Ars Technica]