Quote Originally Posted by Malzian View Post
Yeah, I'm in IT and that field you are talking about (Computer Information System and Information Assurance) was my major in College. Are there ways of mitigating the attack? Yes, to a point. However, sophisticated DDoS attacks are inherently difficult to deal with since there is no single point of origin you can just cut off and be done with. The only company that has successfully thwarted a strong DDoS attack is Microsoft, which is only due to them being able to spin up thousands of virtual servers on their Azure cloud network. It's why Live was up in a day and PSN was down for weeks. So, yeah... You don't just handle DDoS attacks, you weather them and do your best to stabilize where you can.
These things actually happen to call attention to lax security, not because there is no defense against them and we should all just give up. The guys who did those attacks (Lizard I believe?) called both targets idiots and they were mostly right.