DDoS attacks target companies working in various industries, the foremost of which is online retail. Online retailers get the brunt of DDoS attacks for obvious reasons that include hackers wanting to disrupt online retailers’ operations so they lose business. Online retailers can also lose future customers which may affect their growth rate at the end of the year. This is where competitors are prone to hiring hacking teams that can launch DDoS attacks to get ahead and profit.
Another industry that hackers target with DDoS attacks is the financial services industry. The obvious reason to attack the finance industry is to steal funds and discover other ways to realize a financial gain. As previously mentioned, hackers target financial services to damage their reputation and access their data which is usually confidential and highly sensitive.
Disrupting financial service’s infrastructure pays off greatly since companies in the finance industry typically deal either with big clients or important ones. The type of data hackers are usually after in the case of financial services is personal data, credit card information and the usernames and passwords of personnel who can authorize funds transfer or access confidential information.
Governments are not safe from DDoS attacks either. Hackers target government departments to stop them from providing services to their citizens and carrying out their administrative work. The kind of data hackers are after is usually related to the intellectual property along with Social Security numbers and other personal details. Any research that has been funded publicly must have a record with a specific government department. Nation-state hackers launch DDoS attacks to shut those systems down and steal state secrets. Other common reasons why hackers target government agencies include eavesdropping, committing espionage and stealing technology.
Hackers also target the cloud services industry. Many of the most popular websites in the world today rely on services such as AWS and Azure to keep operations running and to continue serving users. All that activity results in significant economic output. Hackers can launch DDoS attacks to disrupt that economic activity.
Generally, hackers target any and all companies that are in the online services industry. Whether that is Netflix (offering streaming services), The New York Times (an online news publication) or the internet service provider itself. The reason why hackers target such services is to access the data they have stored on their servers. Apart from that, eavesdropping and damaging the reputation of the target company are always reasons hackers launch DDoS attacks against companies that have servers connected to the internet.
The online gaming industry is another favorite DDoS hacking target. Sometimes online video game streamers end up on the wrong end of a DDoS attack either as collateral damage or as a target of a group of fans that disagree with the streamer on an issue. Other times, hackers get paid to disrupt specific online gaming sessions so that a group of professional e-athletes gains an advantage over their rivals. Potentially, an esports organization could pay hackers to hack another esports organization and steal data related to player salaries, team tactics and practice schedules to both gain a competitive advantage and use the data to negotiate better deals for themselves from sponsors.