Stopping DDos attacks with blockchain

In a recent report released by multinational cybersecurity providers Kaspersky Lab, the duration and sophistication of DDoS attacks companies have faced so far in 2017 is increasing — with attacks on crypto infrastructure evolving in their sophistication. As the digital economy continues burgeoning, the need for increased cybersecurity is obvious.

During a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, hackers access a large group of infected computers, commonly referred to as a ‘botnet’, which they use to overwhelm a targeted network or website with data — causing it to shut down until the attack ends and the network can be rebooted. Botnets can be easily rented, which means that pretty much anyone can take down large networks without much resistance.

The huge DDos attack of 21 Oct 2016 which crashed Twitter, Netflix, Reddit and CNN, for example, was reported by Forbes to likely have been the work of a single disgruntled gamer with a beef about their Playstation. DDos attacks are also inexpensive to deploy, with a recent Trend Micro report putting the price of a week long DDos attack purchased on the ‘dark web’ at US$150,

Traditionally, protection against such assaults has involved keeping bandwidth reserved in case of an attack. This centralized solution effectively banks bandwidth as a support against the risk of DDoS. If an attack occurs, the additional bandwidth should absorb the flood of data.

It’s potentially expensive, however,  and not guaranteed — as depending on the scale of the attack, the amount of  ‘absorbing’ bandwidth required may be greater than what’s available. In essence, more protection requires more bandwidth, which comes at a cost.

Economically delivering access to excess bandwidth to address this issue is the vision underscoring the Gladius ICO, as it looks to raise funding to create a node network that will allow users to rent out unused bandwidth on their personal internet network.

CEO Max Niebylski says that in contrast to a model where bandwidth services are delivered by a central provider, the Gladius goal is to create a fully decentralized, peer to peer, serverless node network that connects unused bandwidth and storage pools to websites looking for DDoS protection and expedited content delivery.

For businesses, rather than paying a flat rate for a service they never fully utilize, he says Gladius will enable them to “pay for only what they use”. At the same time, people who are paying for a high speed internet connection that they’re only using a few hours a day will be able to download a Gladius desktop client and rent out their unused bandwidth for storage space and earn Gladius Tokens (GLA).

“By having many relatively low bandwidth nodes spread over a large area, instead of a potential client connecting to datacenter far away but with high capacity, they will connect to someone with less capacity but close to them."
— — Gladius CEOMax Niebylski

Niebylski says in addition to the cybersecurity use case, the Gladius solution may also be deployed as a content delivery network, delivering fast content more effectively than any existing architecture because of its decentralized nature.

“By having many relatively low bandwidth nodes spread over a large area, instead of a potential client connecting to datacenter far away but with high capacity, they will connect to someone with less capacity but close to them.” The Gladius public ICO begins on November 1st.