As the old saying goes: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
That’s a mindset that’s been fully embraced by Riley Walz, a 23-year-old “tech prankster” who runs a popular account on X-formerly-Twitter. Over the weekend, Walz went viral after posting about the “world’s first Waymo DDoS,” a reference to distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DDoS is a type of malicious cyberattack in which a hacker tries to drown their target in a swarm of simultaneous requests, typically with the goal of overwhelming networks and disrupting service. Put in real-life terms, it’s like if a crowd of protestors swarmed a restaurant, making it hard for real customers to get in, effectively wasting the businesses’ time and losing them money.
Walz’ DDoS attack, while perhaps more mischievous than malicious in intent