As reported by the BBC, cyber-attacks against anti-racism organisations shot up in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a leading provider of protection services says. Cloudflare, which blocks attacks designed to knock websites offline, says advocacy groups in general saw attacks increase 1,120-fold.
Mr Floyd’s death, in police custody, has sparked nationwide civil unrest in the US. Government and military websites also saw a notable increase in attacks.
DDoS attacks – short for Distributed Denial of Service – are a relatively simple cyber-attack tool, in which the attacker tries to flood a website or other online service with so many fake “users” that it cannot cope. The effect is that it gets knocked offline for people trying to access information or services.
