Distributed denial-of-service attacks are designed to overwhelm an online service with traffic.
The technique has become accessible enough that criminals can offer attack services to customers who may have little technical knowledge.
A 2026 international operation targeted DDoS-for-hire infrastructure and users.
For small organisations, the lesson is that an attack does not have to be technically sophisticated to be disruptive.
Basic resilience includes using reputable hosting and network providers, maintaining monitoring and having a plan for communicating during an outage.
For individuals, DDoS attacks are another example of why online services need infrastructure-level protection that users cannot provide themselves.