How and Why Hackers DDoS

DDoS: To bring down a network, most DDoS Attacks are using Advanced Packet Flooding that overflows the router/switch causing it to crash.
UDP Packet: A Common Protocol for transmitting data over a network
Botnet (NOT technically a DDoS Attack): A collection computers infected with malicious software on different networks, controlled as a group without the users knowledge to preform malicious/illegal activates

• How is DDoSing Preformed?

From Home
You can DDos from your home network with software like SlowLoris but because home networks aren’t even close to how powerful a server is you wouldn’t be able effect a server/network in less a lot of people preform this attack at the same time.
From VPS/ Dedicated
When DDoSing from a VPS or Dedicated server you have access to a powerful network capable of doing some real damage but these servers can be expensive and usually prohibit DDoSing attacks so there not held responsible legally.You can also pay for services that are easy to use and are made just for DDoSing. For example mircostresser.com
From Shell
The people preforming these attacks are considered Elite Haxz0rs and do a lot of the illegal activities to pull it off. First the Haxzor would hack into a website and upload a UDP Shell script either by Force SSHing or directly hacking through an exploit in PHP. Once the script is on the other persons server the Haxzor would repeat the first step in tell he/she has compiled a large list of UDP Shells. Now all the Haxzor has to do is run all scripts at once pointed to one server to DDoS them.

• How Can I protect my Self?

Personal Computer
On your home network the cheapest and best way to protect yourself from DDoSing is use a VPN service the provided a tunneled network. Of course using VPN has other positive attributes and only cost around $6 a month good thing you not an internet company.
Server / Website
For Servers and websites DDoS protection doesn’t come cheap but is widely available. I recommend a service called cloud flare it’s fairly cheap with price ranging from $20 to $3000 per month.
Why would a Hacker DDoS?
Most of time the attack aimed at shutdown a website or server but high number of skid’s lately have been DDoS players into online games to cause them to time out and lose. Also hackers will DDoS a server to slow it down but not crash it so they crack the SSL key before it resets. It might be important to mention that hackers sometimes get paid to DDoS companies that are creating competition.