DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, are malicious efforts to overwhelm a website's server with fake requests, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users and causing significant disruptions. These attacks have targeted major companies like Netflix and Spotify and can range from being merely inconvenient to highly costly depending on their scale and duration. They work by leveraging a network of compromised devices, known as a botnet, to generate massive traffic aimed at a target, which can manifest in different forms, such as volumetric, protocol, or application layer attacks. Motivations behind these attacks include financial gain, hacktivism, revenge, competitive advantage, and serving as a diversion for more severe security breaches. The impact of DDoS attacks is substantial, leading to service disruptions, increased operational costs, potential data loss, and damage to brand reputation, as seen in the case of Bandwidth.com, which suffered significant financial and operational losses. To mitigate these attacks, businesses can employ strategies such as robust network infrastructure, DDoS protection services, rate limiting, web application firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and response planning, while tools like Fingerprint's Device Intelligence Platform can help identify and filter malicious traffic.