Experts say they're called business logic DDOS attacks

May 2, 2013 13:28 GMT  ·  By

Distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks are not used only by hacktivists to make a point or by cybercriminals to cover up fraud. They’re also utilized by companies for business logic attacks.

One example of such a business logic DDOS attack is revealed by Vice President and Distinguished Analyst in Gartner Research Avivah Litan.

Litan says ticket resellers in the secondary market are launching DDOS attacks against primary online ticket sellers – the companies that host the event or ones that sell tickets on their behalf at retail prices. This strategy allows resellers to keep ticket prices high.

“Ticket resellers in the secondary market want to keep the inventory on the event’s available seats low so they can keep their prices high,” the expert explained.

“So in order to restrict the inventory of seats, they use targeted DDoS of the primary event ticketing agents’ websites by keeping those seats locked up (and not purchased) through a business logic attack against their shopping carts.”