DDOS attacks: Why WRITE operations pose a greater threat to distributed systems

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Was talking to one of my teamate about spamming READ vs WRITE operations. During that conversation I realized something mischevious: WRITE operation is a better operation when performing DDOS attack against a distributed ot not service.

Sure. So creating a folder is a modifying (WRITE operation) request just like deleting is unlike checking folder existence request (READ operation). At a higher level with node balancing in a distributed system:

  • 1 master server for write
  • 3 slave server for read replicas

A write can only be processed by 1 server. Write can be serves by 3 servers.

On this practical scenario we can see that spamming READ is usually fine as there are more resources to take care of it. However spamming write might cause the service to go down.

Hopefully this gives you more context. Happy to spend few minutes on a call to show you few more examples.