essay on my computer lab

Computer Lab In School: Why Is It Necessary?

In today’s digital era, the integration of technology in education has become increasingly crucial. One significant aspect of this integration is the presence of computer labs in schools. A computer lab in a school refers to a dedicated space equipped with computers and other technological resources for educational purposes.

The use of computer labs in schools extends beyond mere exposure to technology. It allows students to develop essential skills such as information literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. By providing access to various software programs and online resources, computer labs enable students to engage actively in research , analysis, and creativity. 

What is a computer lab in a school?

A computer lab in a school is a designated space equipped with multiple computers and necessary software to facilitate technological learning and enhance students’ digital literacy skills. The benefits of having a computer lab in schools are numerous. The equipment found in a computer lab is carefully selected to cater to the needs of students across various grade levels. 

 In order for both teachers and students to make effective use of the computer lab, training plays a crucial role. Teachers need training on how best to integrate technology into their lessons, ensuring that they are able to effectively deliver content using digital resources. Similarly, students benefit from training sessions where they can develop proficiency in using different software applications, improving their digital literacy skills which are now considered essential in our technology-driven society. 

Overall, a computer lab in school offers numerous benefits by providing access to technology, offering specialized equipment suited for educational purposes, and facilitating necessary training for both teachers and students alike. It serves as an important resource that enhances technological learning experiences while fostering collaboration among peers. 

What is the purpose of having a computer lab in school?

One of the key justifications for having a dedicated space for students to engage with technological resources and tools is to provide them with an environment conducive to exploring, experimenting, and acquiring the essential digital literacy skills necessary for success in today’s increasingly technology-driven world.

The purpose of having a computer lab in school is to offer students access to computers, software applications, and the internet that they may not have at home. This enables them to develop proficiency in using various technologies, such as word processing programs, spreadsheets, graphic design tools, and coding platforms. 

The benefits of having a computer lab extend beyond technical competency. It also allows students to collaborate on projects that require digital tools or research. In this shared space, they can work together and learn from one another’s expertise or unique perspectives. The importance of having a computer lab in schools cannot be overstated in today’s society where technology plays an integral role in almost every aspect of life. Digital literacy has become an essential skill set for future employment prospects and overall participation in society. 

How are computer labs used in school?

Computer labs are utilized by students to engage in hands-on learning experiences with technology, allowing them to explore digital tools and resources that enhance their understanding and application of academic concepts.

These labs provide a space where students can actively participate in interactive learning activities that promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills. By using computers, students have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers, conduct online research, and develop important digital literacy skills.

One of the primary benefits of computer labs is that they enable students to become proficient in using various digital tools and technologies. Through interactive learning activities facilitated by computer programs and software, students can practice and improve their skills in areas such as coding, graphic design, video editing, and more.

Overall, computer labs serve as a valuable resource for schools because they provide an environment where students can engage in interactive learning experiences that enhance their digital literacy skills while also honing their ability to conduct effective online research.

Reasons Why School Computer Labs Still Matter

School computer labs are essential in ensuring unbiased access to technology for all students.

By providing a centralized location with equal access to computers and software, schools can bridge the digital divide that exists outside of the classroom. These labs also offer advanced resources such as specialized software and high-performance workstations which can enhance the learning experience for students.

School Computer Labs ensure unbiased access

Ensuring equal access to technological resources, computer labs in educational institutions serve as an impartial platform for students to explore and utilize digital tools. These labs provide uninterrupted learning opportunities for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background or access to technology at home. By having a dedicated space with computers and internet connectivity, schools can bridge the digital divide and ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to enhance their technological skills.

In today’s increasingly digital world, possessing technological skills is crucial for success in various fields. This lack of access can create disparities in learning outcomes and hinder students’ ability to develop essential digital competencies. School computer labs play a vital role in addressing this issue by providing a leveled playing field where all students can acquire and refine their technological skills. The communal setting encourages peer-to-peer learning and allows individuals with varying levels of expertise to help one another grow. 

School computer labs ensure unbiased access by providing uninterrupted learning opportunities and equal chances for enhancing technological skills. These spaces break down barriers created by unequal access outside the classroom and foster collaboration among diverse groups of learners. As technology continues to shape our lives, it is imperative that educational institutions prioritize equitable access to digital resources through well-equipped computer labs.

Modern computer labs promote collaboration

Collaborative learning environments in educational institutions are enhanced through the integration of modern computer labs. These labs provide students with the necessary tools and resources to work together on projects, assignments, and research. By promoting collaboration, computer labs encourage students to share ideas, exchange knowledge, and learn from one another. This not only enhances their learning experience but also fosters teamwork skills that are essential for success in the professional world.

Modern computer labs offer various features that facilitate collaborative work. For instance, they have large screens or projectors that allow multiple students to view and discuss information simultaneously. This promotes active participation and engagement among students as they can collectively analyze data, solve problems, or present their findings.

Modern computer labs play a vital role in promoting collaboration and enhancing learning in educational institutions. They provide an environment where students can engage in teamwork activities and leverage technology to support their academic endeavors. By fostering collaboration among peers and offering resources for collective work, computer labs contribute to creating a dynamic educational setting that prepares students for future challenges requiring effective teamwork skills.

Advanced resources for students

Advanced resources such as cutting-edge technology and specialized software greatly enhance students’ learning experiences in modern computer labs. These resources provide opportunities for interactive learning, allowing students to actively engage with the material and develop important technological skills. Interactive learning is a highly effective method that promotes student engagement and deepens their understanding of the subject matter.

In modern computer labs, students have access to various advanced resources that facilitate interactive learning. For instance, they can use simulation software to conduct virtual experiments or simulations that would be otherwise impossible in a traditional classroom setting. This hands-on approach not only enables students to apply theoretical concepts but also fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills. 

As technology continues to advance rapidly in today’s society, having proficiency in various digital tools has become essential for success in many fields. Computer lab environments provide an ideal setting for students to explore different software applications, learn coding languages, or develop multimedia presentations. By gaining practical experience with these technologies, students are better prepared for future academic pursuits and professional endeavors.

Workstations Can Provide More

Expanding the capabilities of workstations can significantly enhance the learning experience for students in modern educational settings. By providing advanced resources and tools, workstations can increase productivity and facilitate enhanced learning. Students can access a wide range of software applications and online resources that allow them to explore complex concepts, conduct research, and develop critical thinking skills.

With improved skills, students are better equipped to tackle academic challenges and excel in their studies. Workstations offer opportunities for hands-on learning, where students can engage in interactive simulations or virtual experiments that may not be feasible in a traditional classroom setting. This practical approach fosters a deeper understanding of subjects by allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world scenarios. Expanding the capabilities of workstations in computer labs is essential for creating an enriched learning environment for students. The increased productivity facilitated by advanced resources allows students to delve deeper into subjects while improving their skills simultaneously. 

Write some disadvantages of computer lab in school:

A potential drawback of having a computer lab in school is the tendency for students to become overly reliant on technology, which can hinder their development of essential critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While computers provide instant access to information and facilitate quick completion of tasks, this convenience may lead students to rely on these machines rather than hone their analytical abilities. 

Another disadvantage of computer labs in schools is the potential for distractions and misuse. With internet access at their fingertips, students may be tempted to visit websites or engage in activities unrelated to their academic work. Social media platforms , online gaming sites, and other entertainment options can easily divert their attention from educational tasks. 

While computer labs in schools offer numerous benefits, there are several drawbacks that should be considered. Overreliance on technology can hinder the development of critical thinking skills among students as they become dependent on machines for problem-solving tasks. Distractions posed by internet access can divert attention away from academic work and diminish productivity within these spaces designed for educational purposes.

Can students use the computer lab outside of regular class hours?

Outside of regular class hours, students have the opportunity to utilize the computer lab for additional academic pursuits and independent research. The extended access provided by the computer lab allows students to work on their assignments or projects at their own pace without any time constraints. This flexibility enables them to delve deeper into their subjects and explore various resources online that may not be available in a traditional classroom setting.

The extended access to the computer lab offers students the freedom to work on their academic endeavors beyond scheduled classes. This flexibility is particularly valuable for those who may need extra time or specific software applications that may not be readily available elsewhere. Students can take advantage of this resource to complete assignments, conduct research, or collaborate with peers on group projects. They can use this time to pursue personal interests, engage in online courses or tutorials, and explore new areas of knowledge. 

Offering extended access to the computer lab outside of regular class hours provides students with increased flexibility and fosters independent learning opportunities. It allows them to work at their own pace and explore diverse resources online without any time limitations. By utilizing this facility, students gain invaluable digital skills while becoming proactive learners who actively seek out knowledge beyond what is taught in class. 

Is internet access available in school computer labs?

Internet access is a fundamental resource available within the confines of the academic computer facility. It serves as a vital tool for students to enhance their learning experience and broaden their knowledge. These limitations are put in place to ensure student safety and prevent misuse of online resources. By implementing internet restrictions, schools can create a secure environment where students can navigate the digital world responsibly.

While internet access in school computer labs provides numerous educational benefits , it also raises concerns regarding student privacy. Schools have a responsibility to protect students’ personal information and ensure their online safety. With technological advancements shaping our society, it is essential for students to develop skills that enable them to effectively navigate and utilize digital resources.

Computer labs offer opportunities for students to learn how to conduct research, evaluate online sources for credibility, collaborate on projects using various digital tools, and develop critical thinking skills related to technology usage. By incorporating digital literacy training into the curriculum through computer lab sessions, schools empower students with the necessary skills for success in today’s increasingly connected world.

In conclusion, computer labs in schools play a crucial role in providing students with access to technology and enhancing their learning experience. These labs are dedicated spaces equipped with computers and internet connectivity, allowing students to develop their digital literacy skills and explore various educational resources. The purpose of having a computer lab in school is to ensure that all students have equal opportunities to use technology for educational purposes.

Computer labs are used in schools for a variety of reasons. They provide students with the necessary tools and software to complete assignments, conduct research, and collaborate on projects. Despite the advantages of computer labs, there are some disadvantages as well. Limited availability of computers or overcrowded labs can restrict access for certain students, making it difficult for them to fully utilize these resources. 

In terms of accessibility, some schools allow students to use the computer lab outside regular class hours for additional practice or research. This flexibility enables students to further enhance their digital skills and take advantage of the resources provided by the lab. Regarding internet access, most school computer labs have reliable internet connections that allow students to browse online resources relevant to their studies and engage in online collaborative activities.

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The Pros and Cons of Computer Labs

I have spent six of my almost nine years of teaching in a computer lab. Over that time, my feelings about computer labs have fluctuated. It may seem silly for me to be in opposition to my own job, but there are times that teaching in a lab can be frustrating and isolating. On the other hand, there are times when I realized that there is no other place that my students would be learning how to program, edit videos, create music or format text documents.

Neither of the schools in which I have been the technology teacher have had a library, a librarian or access to much classroom technology in student hands. As such, I have found that my role as the "Computer Teacher" has actually been many roles. In that way, the computer lab was an important place in these schools. On the other hand, it is challenging to try connecting what is taught in the lab with what students are learning in their classrooms, which is, in my opinion, the ideal way to structure technology education.

Another challenging part of teaching in a computer lab is the room layout itself. Most labs contain desktops lined up against a wall in either rows or pods. These layouts, due to wiring and cables, are not mobile or adaptable. In my lab, my younger students can barely see over their computers to follow what is going on at the board. In other labs I have visited or seen, students must turn their bodies to view the board.

Making It Work

Most computer labs are also not laid out well for group work. Technology lends itself to project-based learning, and this can be hard to manage or coordinate in a classroom that is not conducive to moving furniture or creating space for groups or teams to work. Often, the computer takes up most of the desk or table space, too, so there is less room for teams to work out ideas before creating them on the computer. A lot of this work must be done in the classroom before they get to the lab, which means that, even when groups are ready to start creating on the computer, they must wait until the day they use the computer lab. This interrupts the creative and design process and inserts an artificial break between the work students are doing and the technology they are using.

However, despite this, I know that there are certain computer literacy skills students are taught in a computer lab that make integrating technology in the classroom easier. If a teacher knows that students have a period or two each week for learning how to edit video, format text, manage files or create websites, then that is less instructional time in the classroom they have to spend teaching these skills. It allows them to focus on the content and process rather than specific computer skills.

Basic pros and cons of computer labs:

• Each student has a machine. Unlike classroom pods or clusters in the library, most computer labs have enough machines for each student.
• Focused computer literacy instruction. Computer labs that have a teacher and are not just a room of computers provide students access to specialized computer literacy education.
• Provide access in schools with no libraries or funding for large tech initiatives. The bottom line is, if a school does not have a library or can't afford to put a lot of technology into its classrooms, then a computer lab is a viable solution to provide access to students for digital learning.
• Limited access as a shared resource. Since labs are separate from the classroom, they are not immediately available and are often shared among many classes.
• Technology removed from classroom. When students have to travel to the computer lab, it means that technology is not truly integrated into the curriculum. Having technology in a separate room sends the message that technology is separate from what students are learning in the classroom.
• Room layout. This could be one of the most frustrating things about teaching in a computer lab. The layouts of most computer labs are rigid and fixed and do not lend themselves easily to dynamic lessons or projects. In addition, there is rarely room for real work, since keyboards and mice usually take up most of the desktop space.

If you have discovered any additional pros or cons in the computer lab at your school, please share them in the comments section below.

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How to Write the “Why Computer Science?” Essay

What’s covered:, what is the purpose of the “why computer science” essay, elements of a good computer science essay, computer science essay example, where to get your essay edited.

You will encounter many essay prompts as you start applying to schools, but if you are intent on majoring in computer science or a related field, you will come across the “ Why Computer Science? ” essay archetype. It’s important that you know the importance behind this prompt and what constitutes a good response in order to make your essay stand out.

For more information on writing essays, check out CollegeVine’s extensive essay guides that include everything from general tips, to essay examples, to essay breakdowns that will help you write the essays for over 100 schools.

Colleges ask you to write a “ Why Computer Science? ” essay so you may communicate your passion for computer science, and demonstrate how it aligns with your personal and professional goals. Admissions committees want to see that you have a deep interest and commitment to the field, and that you have a vision for how a degree in computer science will propel your future aspirations.

The essay provides an opportunity to distinguish yourself from other applicants. It’s your chance to showcase your understanding of the discipline, your experiences that sparked or deepened your interest in the field, and your ambitions for future study and career. You can detail how a computer science degree will equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to make a meaningful contribution in this rapidly evolving field.

A well-crafted “ Why Computer Science? ” essay not only convinces the admissions committee of your enthusiasm and commitment to computer science, but also provides a glimpse of your ability to think critically, solve problems, and communicate effectively—essential skills for a  computer scientist.

The essay also gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the specific computer science program at the college or university you are applying to. You can discuss how the program’s resources, faculty, curriculum, and culture align with your academic interests and career goals. A strong “ Why Computer Science? ” essay shows that you have done your research, and that you are applying to the program not just because you want to study computer science, but because you believe that this particular program is the best fit for you.

Writing an effective “ Why Computer Science ?” essay often requires a blend of two popular college essay archetypes: “ Why This Major? ” and “ Why This College? “.

Explain “Why This Major?”

The “ Why This Major? ” essay is an opportunity for you to dig deep into your motivations and passions for studying Computer Science. It’s about sharing your ‘origin story’ of how your interest in Computer Science took root and blossomed. This part of your essay could recount an early experience with coding, a compelling Computer Science class you took, or a personal project that sparked your fascination.

What was the journey that led you to this major? Was it a particular incident, or did your interest evolve over time? Did you participate in related activities, like coding clubs, online courses, hackathons, or internships?

Importantly, this essay should also shed light on your future aspirations. How does your interest in Computer Science connect to your career goals? What kind of problems do you hope to solve with your degree?

The key for a strong “ Why This Major? ” essay is to make the reader understand your connection to the subject. This is done through explaining your fascination and love for computer science. What emotions do you feel when you are coding? How does it make you feel when you figure out the solution after hours of trying? What aspects of your personality shine when you are coding? 

By addressing these questions, you can effectively demonstrate a deep, personal, and genuine connection with the major.

Emphasize “Why This College?”

The “ Why This College? ” component of the essay demonstrates your understanding of the specific university and its Computer Science program. This is where you show that you’ve done your homework about the college, and you know what resources it has to support your academic journey.

What unique opportunities does the university offer for Computer Science students? Are there particular courses, professors, research opportunities, or clubs that align with your interests? Perhaps there’s a study abroad program or an industry partnership that could give you a unique learning experience. Maybe the university has a particular teaching methodology that resonates with you.

Also, think about the larger university community. What aspects of the campus culture, community, location, or extracurricular opportunities enhance your interest in this college? Remember, this is not about general praises but about specific features that align with your goals. How will these resources and opportunities help you explore your interests further and achieve your career goals? How does the university’s vision and mission resonate with your own values and career aspirations?

It’s important when discussing the school’s resources that you always draw a connection between the opportunity and yourself. For example, don’t tell us you want to work with X professor because of their work pioneering regenerative AI. Go a step further and say because of your goal to develop AI surgeons for remote communities, learning how to strengthen AI feedback loops from X professor would bring you one step closer to achieving your dream.

By articulating your thoughts on these aspects, you demonstrate a strong alignment between the college and your academic goals, enhancing your appeal as a prospective student.

Demonstrate a Deep Understanding of Computer Science

As with a traditional “ Why This Major? ” essay, you must exhibit a deep and clear understanding of computer science. Discuss specific areas within the field that pique your interest and why. This could range from artificial intelligence to software development, or from data science to cybersecurity. 

What’s important is to not just boast and say “ I have a strong grasp on cybersecurity ”, but instead use your knowledge to show your readers your passion: “ After being bombarded with cyber attack after cyber attack, I explained to my grandparents the concept of end-to-end encryption and how phishing was not the same as a peaceful afternoon on a lake. ”

Make it Fun!

Students make the mistake of thinking their college essays have to be serious and hyper-professional. While you don’t want to be throwing around slang and want to present yourself in a positive light, you shouldn’t feel like you’re not allowed to have fun with your essay. Let your personality shine and crack a few jokes.

You can, and should, also get creative with your essay. A great way to do this in a computer science essay is to incorporate lines of code or write the essay like you are writing out code. 

Now we will go over a real “ Why Computer Science? ” essay a student submitted and explore what the essay did well, and where there is room for improvement.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized.

I held my breath and hit RUN. Yes! A plump white cat jumped out and began to catch the falling pizzas. Although my Fat Cat project seems simple now, it was the beginning of an enthusiastic passion for computer science. Four years and thousands of hours of programming later, that passion has grown into an intense desire to explore how computer science can serve society. Every day, surrounded by technology that can recognize my face and recommend scarily-specific ads, I’m reminded of Uncle Ben’s advice to a young Spiderman: “with great power comes great responsibility”. Likewise, the need to ensure digital equality has skyrocketed with AI’s far-reaching presence in society; and I believe that digital fairness starts with equality in education.

The unique use of threads at the College of Computing perfectly matches my interests in AI and its potential use in education; the path of combined threads on Intelligence and People gives me the rare opportunity to delve deep into both areas. I’m particularly intrigued by the rich sets of both knowledge-based and data-driven intelligence courses, as I believe AI should not only show correlation of events, but also provide insight for why they occur.

In my four years as an enthusiastic online English tutor, I’ve worked hard to help students overcome both financial and technological obstacles in hopes of bringing quality education to people from diverse backgrounds. For this reason, I’m extremely excited by the many courses in the People thread that focus on education and human-centered technology. I’d love to explore how to integrate AI technology into the teaching process to make education more available, affordable, and effective for people everywhere. And with the innumerable opportunities that Georgia Tech has to offer, I know that I will be able to go further here than anywhere else.

What the Essay Did Well 

This essay perfectly accomplishes the two key parts of a “ Why Computer Science? ” essay: answering “ Why This Major? ” and “ Why This College? ”. Not to mention, we get a lot of insight into this student and what they care about beyond computer science, and a fun hook at the beginning.

Starting with the “ Why This Major? ” aspect of the response, this essay demonstrates what got the student into computer science, why they are passionate about the subject, and what their goals are. They show us their introduction to the world of CS with an engaging hook: “I held my breath and hit RUN. Yes! A plump white cat jumped out and began to catch the falling pizzas. ” We then see this is a core passion because they spent “ Four years and thousands of hours ,” coding.

The student shows us why they care about AI with the sentence, “ Every day, surrounded by technology that can recognize my face and recommend scarily-specific ads ,” which makes the topic personal by demonstrating their fear at AI’s capabilities. But, rather than let panic overwhelm them, the student calls upon Spiderman and tells us their goal of establishing digital equality through education. This provides a great basis for the rest of the essay, as it thoroughly explains the students motivations and goals, and demonstrates their appreciation for interdisciplinary topics.

Then, the essay shifts into answering “ Why This College? ”, which it does very well by honing in on a unique facet of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing: threads. This is a great example of how to provide depth to the school resources you mention. The student describes the two threads and not only why the combination is important to them, but how their previous experiences (i.e. online English tutor) correlate to the values of the thread: “ For this reason, I’m extremely excited by the many courses in the People thread that focus on education and human-centered technology. ”

What Could Be Improved

This essay does a good job covering the basics of the prompt, but it could be elevated with more nuance and detail. The biggest thing missing from this essay is a strong core to tie everything together. What do we mean by that? We want to see a common theme, anecdote, or motivation that is weaved throughout the entire essay to connect everything. Take the Spiderman quote for example. If this was expanded, it could have been the perfect core for this essay.

Underlying this student’s interest in AI is a passion for social justice, so they could have used the quote about power and responsibility to talk about existing injustices with AI and how once they have the power to create AI they will act responsibly and help affected communities. They are clearly passionate about equality of education, but there is a disconnect between education and AI that comes from a lack of detail. To strengthen the core of the essay, this student needs to include real-world examples of how AI is fostering inequities in education. This takes their essay from theoretical to practical.

Whether you’re a seasoned writer or a novice trying your hand at college application essays, the review and editing process is crucial. A fresh set of eyes can provide valuable insights into the clarity, coherence, and impact of your writing. Our free Peer Essay Review tool offers a unique platform to get your essay reviewed by another student. Peer reviews can often uncover gaps, provide new insights or enhance the clarity of your essay, making your arguments more compelling. The best part? You can return the favor by reviewing other students’ essays, which is a great way to hone your own writing and critical thinking skills.

For a more professional touch, consider getting your essay reviewed by a college admissions expert . CollegeVine advisors have years of experience helping students refine their writing and successfully apply to top-tier schools. They can provide specific advice on how to showcase your strengths, address any weaknesses, and generally present yourself in the best possible light.

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Essay on Computer

500+ words essay on computer.

A computer is an electronic device that performs complex calculations. It is a wonderful product of modern technology. Nowadays, computers have become a significant part of our life. Whether it is in the sector of education or health, computers are used everywhere. Our progress is entirely dependent on computers powered by the latest technology. This ‘Essay on Computer’ also covers the history of computers as well as their uses in different sectors. By going through the ‘Computer’ Essay in English, students will get an idea of writing a good Essay on Computers. After practising this essay, they will be able to write essays on other topics related to computers, such as the ‘Uses of Computer’ Essay.

The invention of the computer has made our lives easier. The device is used for many purposes, such as securing information, messages, data processing, software programming, calculations, etc. A desktop computer has a CPU, UPS, monitor, keyboard, and mouse to work. A laptop is a modern form of computer in which all the components are inbuilt into a single device. Earlier, computers were not so fast and powerful. After thorough and meticulous research and work by various scientists, modern-day computers have come up.

History of Computers

The history of computer development is often used to reference the different generations of computing devices. Each generation of computers is characterised by a major technological development that fundamentally changed the way computers work. Most of the major developments from the 1940s to the present day have resulted in increasingly smaller, more powerful, faster, cheaper and more efficient computing devices.

The evolution of computer technology is often divided into five generations. These five generations of computers are as follows:

Uses of Computers

Computers are used in various fields. Some of the applications are

1. Business

A computer can perform a high-speed calculation more efficiently and accurately, due to which it is used in all business organisations. In business, computers are used for:

• Payroll calculations
• Sales analysis
• Maintenance of stocks
• Managing employee databases

2. Education

Computers are very useful in the education system. Especially now, during the COVID time, online education has become the need of the hour. There are miscellaneous ways through which an institution can use computers to educate students.

3. Health Care

Computers have become an important part of hospitals, labs and dispensaries. They are used for the scanning and diagnosis of different diseases. Computerised machines do scans, which include ECG, EEG, ultrasound and CT Scan, etc. Moreover, they are used in hospitals to keep records of patients and medicines.

Computers are largely used in defence. The military employs computerised control systems, modern tanks, missiles, weapons, etc. It uses computers for communication, operation and planning, smart weapons, etc.

5. Government

Computers play an important role in government services. Some major fields are:

• Computation of male/female ratio
• Computerisation of PAN card
• Income Tax Department
• Weather forecasting
• Computerisation of voters’ lists
• Sales Tax Department

6. Communication

Communication is a way to convey an idea, a message, a picture, a speech or any form of text, audio or video clip. Computers are capable of doing so. Through computers, we can send an email, chat with each other, do video conferencing, etc.

Nowadays, to a large extent, banking is dependent on computers. Banks provide an online accounting facility, which includes checking current balances, making deposits and overdrafts, checking interest charges, shares, trustee records, etc. The ATM machines, which are fully automated, use computers, making it easier for customers to deal with banking transactions.

8. Marketing

In marketing, computers are mainly used for advertising and home shopping.

Similarly, there are various other applications of computers in other fields, such as insurance, engineering, design, etc.

Students can practise more essays on different topics to improve their writing skills. Keep learning and stay tuned with BYJU’S for the latest update on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently asked Questions on Computer Essay

How has the invention of the computer been useful to students.

Easy and ready access to information has been possible (internet) with the invention of the computer.

How to start writing an essay on a computer?

Before writing an essay, first plan the topics, sub-topics and main points which are going to be included in the body of the essay. Then, structure the content accordingly and check for information and examples.

How to use the computer to browse for information on essays?

Various search engines are available, like Google, where plenty of information can be obtained regarding essays and essay structures.

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Computer Science Essay Examples

Explore 15+ Brilliant Computer Science Essay Examples: Tips Included

Published on: May 5, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 30, 2024

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Do you struggle with writing computer science essays that get you the grades you deserve?

If so, you're not alone!

Crafting a top-notch essay can be a daunting task, but it's crucial to your success in the field of computer science.

For that, CollegeEssay.org has a solution for you!

In this comprehensive guide, we'll provide you with inspiring examples of computer science essays. You'll learn everything you need to know to write effective and compelling essays that impress your professors and get you the grades you deserve.

So, let's dive in and discover the secrets to writing amazing computer science essays!

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Computer Science Essays: Understanding the Basics

A computer science essay is a piece of writing that explores a topic related to computer science. It may take different forms, such as an argumentative essay, a research paper, a case study, or a reflection paper. 

Just like any other essay, it should be well-researched, clear, concise, and effectively communicate the writer's ideas and arguments.

Computer essay examples encompass a wide range of topics and types, providing students with a diverse set of writing opportunities. 

Here, we will explore some common types of computer science essays:

Middle School Computer Science Essay Example

College Essay Example Computer Science

University Computer Science Essay Example

Computer Science Extended Essay Example

Uiuc Computer Science Essay Example [

Computer Science Essay Examples For Different Fields

Computer science is a broad field that encompasses many different areas of study. For that, given below are some examples of computer science essays for some of the most popular fields within the discipline. 

By exploring these examples, you can gain insight into the different types of essays within this field.

College Application Essay Examples Computer Science

The Future of Computers Technology

Historical Development of Computer Science

Young Children and Technology: Building Computer Literacy

Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence

Looking for more examples of computer science essays? Given below are some additional examples of computer science essays for readers to explore and gain further inspiration from. 

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Computer Science Essay Topics

There are countless computer science essay topics to choose from, so it can be challenging to narrow down your options. 

However, the key is to choose a topic that you are passionate about and that aligns with your assignment requirements.

Here are ten examples of computer science essay topics to get you started:

• The impact of artificial intelligence on society: benefits and drawbacks
• Cybersecurity measures in cloud computing systems
• The Ethics of big data: privacy, bias, and Transparency
• The future of quantum computing: possibilities and challenges
• The Role of computer hardware in Healthcare: current applications and potential innovations
• Programming languages: a comparative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses
• The use of machine learning in predicting human behavior
• The challenges and solutions for developing secure and reliable software
• The Role of blockchain technology in improving supply chain management
• The use of data analytics in business decision-making.

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Tips to Write an Effective Computer Science Essay

Writing an effective computer science essay requires a combination of technical expertise and strong writing skills. Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling and well-written essay:

Understand the Requirements: Make sure you understand the assignment requirements, including the essay type, format, and length.

• Choose a Topic: Select a topic that you are passionate about and that aligns with your assignment requirements.
• Create an Outline: Develop a clear and organized outline that highlights the main points and subtopics of your essay.
• Use Appropriate Language and Tone: Use technical terms and language when appropriate. But ensure your writing is clear, concise, and accessible to your target audience.
• Provide Evidence: Use relevant and credible evidence to support your claims, and ensure you cite your sources correctly.
• Edit and Proofread Your Essay: Review your essay for clarity, coherence, and accuracy. Check for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and formatting issues.

By following these tips, you can improve the quality of your computer science essay and increase your chances of success.

In conclusion, writing a computer science essay can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. 

It allows you to showcase your knowledge and skills within the field and develop your writing and critical thinking abilities. By following the examples provided in this blog, you can create an effective computer science essay, which will meet your requirements.

If you find yourself struggling with the writing process, consider seeking essay writing help online from CollegeEssay.org. 

Our AI essay writer can provide guidance and support in crafting a top-notch computer science essay.

So, what are you waiting for? Hire our computer science essay writing service today!

Nova A. (Literature, Marketing)

As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, writing a standout computer science college essay.

Hey all, I'm applying to colleges next year and I plan on majoring in computer science. I want my college essay to stand out, so do you have any tips or ideas on how to make a computer science-related essay unique? Thanks in advance!

Absolutely! Your college essay is a great opportunity to showcase your passion for computer science while also highlighting your personality and unique experiences. Here's an outline to help make your computer science-related essay stand out:

1. Choose a specific angle: Avoid writing a general essay about your love for computers or programming. Instead, focus on a particular aspect of computer science that has significantly impacted your life or inspired you. This could be a project you worked on, a specific concept or language you found fascinating, or a problem you encountered and worked to solve.

2. Incorporate a personal story or moment: Present your idea or experience through a personal narrative to make it relatable and engaging. A moment of conflict, challenge, discovery, or growth can make for a captivating story, allowing you to demonstrate how you've applied computer science to your own life or how it has shaped you.

3. Show your passion and curiosity: Highlight your enthusiasm for learning and exploring new concepts within computer science. Showing that you're not only skilled in this field but also genuinely interested and dedicated to its development will make your essay more compelling to admissions officers.

4. Emphasize your impact or contribution: Colleges love to see how you've made a positive impact or contributed to something greater through your passion for computer science. Discuss how you've overcome obstacles, acted as a mentor, or used your skills to benefit your community, school, or other organizations. This will demonstrate your commitment to bettering the world through your talents.

5. Infuse your personality: Don't forget to let your personality shine through in your writing. Admissions officers want to get to know you as an individual, so write as authentically as possible and use your unique voice. This could include sharing a quirky hobby related to computer science or revealing how your cultural or personal background has shaped your perspective in the field.

6. Revise and polish: Finally, don't underestimate the importance of editing and revising your essay. Ensure that your narrative flows smoothly, and work on making your sentences clear, concise, and powerful. Ask for feedback from a trusted friend, teacher, or family member, and be open to their suggestions.

Remember, the key is to make your essay a reflection of who you are and how computer science has played a meaningful role in your life. Good luck with your writing!

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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Education  |  Aug 22 2019

5 Reasons Why School Computer Labs Still Matter

In response to a rising number of students with personal laptops, educators and administrators are questioning the need for computer labs. However, while access to technology is changing their function, computer labs remain relevant in today’s schools for a number of reasons. For starters, computer labs create inclusive, structured learning environments where students can prepare for a tech-heavy future. Not long ago, school computer labs were a mainstay of the education environment. Today, not so much. In fact, they’ve become downright controversial. Their very existence is at the root of the controversy. 

Many schools provide a computing device for every student. Those that haven’t yet achieved this, aspire to. Budgets are tight. Time is a limited resource. The computer lab has become a target for sparing both. Those who favor eliminating school computer labs hold up 1:1 as the answer to all computing needs.

They ask: Why fund a computer lab when students carry computing power with them from class to class? Why take time from core subjects to teach computing when students have this everywhere learning tool? Why can’t classroom teachers integrate computer skills into their curriculum? 

The impact of mobile computing on education is indisputable. These powerful devices caused a sea change on par with that of the microcomputer, which launched the first school computer labs. Accessibility to computing power is no longer constrained by time and place.

Some say these changes portend the death of the school computer lab. Yet many educators advocate for their continued use. Below, five key reasons why school computer labs still matter in today’s environment.

1. Workstations Have More to Offer

Portable computing power offers learning advantages in virtually any educational environment. Yet, iPads and Chromebooks have their limitations. It’s a case of the right tool for the job. There are many things for which PC workstations are better suited. 

Full computer lab workstations deliver greater computing power and more screen space than mobile devices. They offer better ergonomics and full-sized keyboards. PCs with powerful processors are ideal, and often a must-have, for subjects like advanced programming, engineering, and video editing. Full-sized keyboards make for easier typing of long papers. 

Added screen real estate lets students work smarter and more efficiently. More information onscreen means less time needed to click and swap among tabs and windows. This has a host of advantages. For example, reference articles can be kept open and visible as students write a paper. 

The health benefits of a full-sized monitor are not trivial. Correct  ergonomics while computing  is critical to reducing strain, discomfort and long-term injury like herniated discs. The top of a display should be at or slightly below eye level. Laptops sit much lower on a work surface.

The result is often considerable neck strain, commonly called  “tech neck.”  Using a full-sized, adjustable monitor keeps students comfortable now and safeguards their future health. 

Don’t need powerful processing in your school computer lab? Does your school issue laptops or Chromebooks to all students? Gan the advantages of workstation comfort and productivity by providing full-sized external monitors. Include docking stations or WiFi options for easy connectivity. 

2. School Computer Labs Ensure Equitable Access

While 1:1 computing is on the rise, equity gaps persist. Many schools still lack the resources to implement 1:1 learning. 

The Consortium for School Networking reveals the extent of these gaps in its 2018-2019  annual infrastructure survey .  Forty-one percent (41%) of high school students lack access to a non-shared in-school device. In middle schools, 37% of the students lack individual 1:1 device access.

Elementary school students have the least access to personal devices, at 71%. This represents some progress over the prior year. Yet it still leaves a large portion of the US student population without a dedicated device during the school day. 

At home, the survey found, there were no gains in students access to computing devices. This, in fact, is an ongoing trend. Since 2015, 10% or fewer school districts have reported that all of their students have internet access via non-shared devices at home. 

Until all students have a dedicated computing device, school computer labs provide a place for equitable access to this vital resource. 

3. School Computer Labs Supplement Classroom Learning

Students that use Chromebooks or other mobile devices during class gain digital literacy skills in tandem with class curriculum. Students type notes. Group projects are conducted digitally. The internet is at hand for research tasks. It’s a natural integration.

As such, some educators conclude that all aspects of computer learning should move out of the computer lab and into the everyday classroom. On the flip side of the debate are those who advocate for maintaining separate computing facilities. Topping the list of reasons is limited classroom learning time.

Classroom teachers are time-pressed as it is. Covering the required curriculum and attending to students is a daily challenge. How would these teachers add instruction previously covered by a technology specialist or computer teacher? Finding time requires sacrificing something else. 

Computer labs provide a time and space to develop skills not directly related to classroom curriculum. These skills can be first learned in the lab. Then mastered through ongoing application at home and in the classroom. 

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4. A Computer Lab by any Other Name…is Still a Computer Lab

Many schools have rebranded their computer lab rather than remove it altogether. This typically involves some degree of space and technology build-out. It often includes an all-new name, such as:

• Learning commons
• Learning lab
• Information commons
• Information station
• Scholar’s commons
• Maker space
• Innovation center
• Digital commons

Integrating workstations into the school library is a popular approach. These diverse spaces are often known as the “ library commons .” Increasingly, school libraries are less about stocking print materials and more about collaboration and creating meaning.

They’re an ideal place for rows of individual-use workstations. Tech-rich collaboration spaces. Or any combination of tech for your school’s ideal  21st-century learning space .

Want to keep things calmer in the library proper? Have limited staffing resources? Try this recommendation for elementary school computer labs:

• Put 25-30 computers together adjacent to the library
• Use a glass partition to separate the two rooms
• Staff needs are minimized, as they’re able to watch both areas
• If school funding is cut, the close proximity of the library/lab minimizes the chance both will be closed.

The  STEM lab  is another up-and-coming approach. These dedicated high-tech learning spaces are designed to empower students to explore, build and create. STEM labs typically include individual workstations and decked-out collaboration spaces. In well-funded schools, STEM labs often supplement student devices and a robust library commons. The St. Thomas School, for example, provides each student with a laptop and has  two dedicated STEM spaces .

Another option is to refurbish an existing school computer lab. The lab remains in its current location but gets an overhaul of its furnishings, technology, and décor to better suit today’s learning approaches.

5. Modern Computer Labs Promote Collaboration

Traditional computer labs were designed to facilitate one thing: large classes of individual students engaged in similar tasks. They were often windowless rooms with workstations lining the walls to accommodate wiring and cables.

Today’s computer labs, library commons, and STEM labs look nothing like their ancestors. They’re also designed to facilitate a myriad of learning activities. Solo learning and testing, to be sure. But also, and perhaps foremost, collaborative group work.

Just as  classrooms are being redesigned  to accommodate today’s constructivist learning styles, so too are computer labs being redesigned to facilitate working together to explore concepts and create meaning.

Designing a 21st-Century School Computer Lab

There is no one right way to design a 21 st -century computer lab. (Whatever you may call it.) Beginning with the end in mind is a good place to start. What are your objectives for the space? How many students do you want it to accommodate? What are the ways in which will it be used?

Often, commons-type spaces combine an array of technology and furnishings to facilitate several types of learning. These include remote or online learning and research. Content creation and collaboration. Testing and studying. Individual and group work. Tutoring, studying and socializing. Even  esports club  practices.

No two learning commons or computer labs will be alike. Flexibility and the ability to evolve along with technology and pedagogy are key. Breaking the space into activity-based zones can be helpful.

• Individual work zones.  These can include an array of tech options. Smaller cubbies for use with individual devices like tablets and laptops. Larger spaces with external monitors to connect to personal devices. And fully decked-out PC-powered workstations to support STEAM learning and other specialized project work. Including some type of partitioning for privacy is helpful.
• Collaboration zones.  Modular furnishings are key to accommodating many types of project-based and group work. Ideally, students can easily reconfigure tables to suit their needs. Power access, connectivity, and charging are important considerations. Sizable, 24-inch+ monitors with wide viewing angles help students see content easily for group projects and presentations.
• Social learning zones.  Providing less structured areas lets students collaborate and learn casually. Comfortable soft furnishings and café tables set a relaxed tone. Expect conversation and a degree of noise in these areas and plan acoustics accordingly.

Monitors with  an IPS panel  offer the best features for supporting collaboration. These include the maximum possible viewing angles, both up/down and side-to-side, without shifts in color and contrast. When budget permits, 4K resolution provides the greatest visible detail. Ultra HD makes a particularly notable visual impact at the close viewing ranges common for collaborative project work. Content-sharing capabilities are another important aspect of collaboration zones. Whether wired or wifi, students should be able to quickly connect and share content.

Call it by any name you like, the computer lab may well be here to stay. The creative conversion of school computer labs is a smart way to meet evolving educational needs. These tech-rich spaces equitably accommodate more students, with more computing power and greater screen real estate. They provide a place for students to explore, create, connect and develop digital literacy–cornerstone skills for college and career readiness.

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Essay on Computer and its Uses for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on computer.

In this essay on computer, we are going to discuss some useful things about computers. The modern-day computer has become an important part of our daily life. Also, their usage has increased much fold during the last decade. Nowadays, they use the computer in every office whether private or government. Mankind is using computers for over many decades now. Also, they are used in many fields like agriculture, designing, machinery making, defense and many more. Above all, they have revolutionized the whole world.

History of Computers

It is very difficult to find the exact origin of computers. But according to some experts computer exists at the time of world war-II. Also, at that time they were used for keeping data. But, it was for only government use and not for public use. Above all, in the beginning, the computer was a very large and heavy machine.

Working of a Computer 

The computer runs on a three-step cycle namely input, process, and output. Also, the computer follows this cycle in every process it was asked to do. In simple words, the process can be explained in this way. The data which we feed into the computer is input, the work CPU do is process and the result which the computer give is output.

Components and Types of Computer

The simple computer basically consists of CPU, monitor, mouse, and keyboard . Also, there are hundreds of other computer parts that can be attached to it. These other parts include a printer, laser pen, scanner , etc.

The computer is categorized into many different types like supercomputers, mainframes, personal computers (desktop), PDAs, laptop, etc. The mobile phone is also a type of computer because it fulfills all the criteria of being a computer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Uses of Computer in Various Fields

As the usage of computer increased it became a necessity for almost every field to use computers for their operations. Also, they have made working and sorting things easier. Below we are mentioning some of the important fields that use a computer in their daily operation.

Medical Field

They use computers to diagnose diseases, run tests and for finding the cure for deadly diseases . Also, they are able to find a cure for many diseases because of computers.

Whether it’s scientific research, space research or any social research computers help in all of them. Also, due to them, we are able to keep a check on the environment , space, and society. Space research helped us to explore the galaxies. While scientific research has helped us to locate resources and various other useful resources from the earth.

For any country, his defence is most important for the safety and security of its people. Also, computer in this field helps the country’s security agencies to detect a threat which can be harmful in the future. Above all the defense industry use them to keep surveillance on our enemy.

Threats from a Computer

Computers have become a necessity also, they have become a threat too. This is due to hackers who steal your private data and leak them on internet. Also, anyone can access this data. Apart from that, there are other threats like viruses, spams, bug and many other problems.

The computer is a very important machine that has become a useful part of our life. Also, the computers have twin-faces on one side it’s a boon and on the other side, it’s a bane. Its uses completely depend upon you. Apart from that, a day in the future will come when human civilization won’t be able to survive without computers as we depend on them too much. Till now it is a great discovery of mankind that has helped in saving thousands and millions of lives.

Frequently Asked Questions on Computer

Q.1  What is a computer?

A.1 A computer is an electronic device or machine that makes our work easier. Also, they help us in many ways.

Q.2 Mention various fields where computers are used?

A.2  Computers are majorly used in defense, medicine, and for research purposes.

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10 Lines Essay On Computer Lab In English For Students

10 lines essay on computer lab in english.

1. A computer lab is a room equipped with computers and other accessories that are used for teaching, learning, and research purposes.

3. They offer various software programs and tools that help students to enhance <table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td><strong style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;">to enhance</strong><strong>If you enhance something you </strong><strong>improve</strong><strong> it in some way. </strong><strong>It’s often used in marketing, sometimes as an adjective, for instance, when saying that a new product is better than the old one because it has ‘enhanced performance’ etc.</strong><strong>After-sales service will </strong><strong>enhance</strong><strong> the value perceived by the customer.</strong></td></tr></tbody></table> " data-gt-translate-attributes='[{"attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"}]' tabindex=0 role=link>enhance their skills in different domains like programming, graphic designing, video editing, etc.

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5. The labs are equipped with printers, scanners, and projectors, making it easier for teachers to conduct classes and presentations.

6. Computer labs also promote collaborative learning, as students can work together on projects and assignments.

7. They provide a safe and secure environment, ensuring the protection of student data and preventing any misuse of technology.

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Paragraph on Computer Lab In My School – by Shanu

Computers are used in almost every walk of life. Actually we live in a time where everything is largely dependent on the use of the computers.

They have a wide variety of applications in science, education, defense, business and many other sectors.

Computer education in school helps the children to get access to the extensive world of information. Students can find any information that they desire with the help of a computer. Almost every school nowadays has a computer lab of their own. Such labs are quite imperative in educating the children about the wise and efficient use of the computer.

Children can learn to make various subject related researches using the computer; also they can use it to make various projects in school. Likewise my school also has a very high facility computer lab. My school computer lab has a great many utilities which help us in understanding the various aspects of the subject.

Key Features:

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My school computer lab is very special because it incorporates a great many of essential and useful features in itself. The lab houses more than 20 computers and the computers in the lab have the recent versions of the software. It has a hard writing surface on each computer table, so that the students have no problem while taking notes. My school computer lab also has a high speed internet with which helps us greatly in doing any research work.

It also has a whiteboard and flip chart sheets as well as markers for making it simpler to teach for the teachers. Additionally, the school computer lab has convenient air circulation system. A good air circulation system is quite important in a computer lab for mainly two reasons, firstly so as to protect the components from overheating and secondly for the comfort of the users.

Importance of a Lab:

As said earlier, our lives in these modern times are heavily dependent on the use of computers. We need to make the future generation well equipped with the use of computers. Hence, it is highly imperative to include computer education in the school curriculum. My school computer lab, like other labs essentially provides access to various resources to the students.

It also helps in teaching the students about the versatile nature of the computers. It is actually the same multi faceted nature of these machines that make them highly important for the students. Whether it is for research purposes, or for creating a digital document on it or for taking out a print out of your document, computer labs are one resource that are critical for almost everyone in the school.

Conclusion:

Since its launch, computers have been the way towards the future. It is predicted that in the future almost 97% of our daily activities will depend in one way or the other on the use of computers. The educators at my school have understood the importance of computer education and they are doing everything in their hands to give it to each and every one of its students. Providing us with computer labs is one great step take by the school authorities towards teaching computer literacy within the school.

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Microsoft outages caused by CrowdStrike software glitch paralyze airlines, other businesses. Here's what to know.

By Haley Ott

Updated on: July 20, 2024 / 12:06 AM EDT / CBS News

Banks, airlines, television networks and health systems around the world that rely on Microsoft 365 apps were hit by widespread outages early Friday linked to the company CrowdStrike. Thousands of flights and train services were canceled globally, including more than 1,800 in the U.S., and there were disruptions to many other public and retail services. 

Here's what we know about the outages:

What caused the global Microsoft outages?

The issue was caused by a technical problem that global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had identified in its software and was working to resolve. CrowdStrike provides antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.

"Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally," Microsoft said in a statement to CBS News. 

Later on Friday, Microsoft said on social media that it had "completed our mitigation actions and our telemetry indicates all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered. We're entering a period of monitoring to ensure impact is fully resolved."

In a statement, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been identified and a solution was being implemented. He added that "this is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

In an update shared Friday afternoon  on social media , Kurtz again apologized to those impacted and said he was committed "to provide full transparency on how this occurred and the steps we're taking to prevent anything like this from happening again."

What has been affected by the Microsoft outages?

Over 3,000  flights had been canceled  within, into or out of the U.S. as of Friday night, and more than 11,400 others were delayed, according to the flight tracking service,  FlightAware . Globally, more than 42,000 flights were delayed Friday. 

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines resumed at least some flight departures later Friday morning after pausing operations earlier in the day due to the outages. 

"We have recovered our operation today and expect to deliver a reliable operation for our customers tomorrow," American Airlines said in a statement Friday evening. 

And Toby Enqvist, chief operations officer for United Airlines, said in a statement late Friday night that "while we had to cancel and delay far more flights than we ever want to, we are poised to return to a near-normal operation on Saturday."

A timelapse shared by the Federal Aviation Administration showed flights resuming Friday afternoon.

Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston canceled all previously scheduled surgeries and medical visits that were not considered urgent because many of the computer systems were down, preventing access to vital digital records.

"We do everything on our computers now," neuro ICU nurse Meghan Mahoney told CBS News. "…People's medical history, their allergies. So when that goes down, we have to revert back to paper charting."

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City postponed all procedures requiring anesthesia. Emory Healthcare system in Atlanta delayed certain types of surgeries. Seattle Children's Hospital closed its outpatient clinic.  

The Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday afternoon it was "working to assess the impact of the CrowdStrike outage on patient care and HHS systems, services, and operations."   

A Department of Homeland Security memo to staff obtained by CBS News said that "DHS systems are currently impacted by a global outage of the cybersecurity software CrowdStrike. This is impacting many businesses globally, as you may be seeing in the news. This was not a cyberattack."  

Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an Emergency Declaration for the city on Friday. The declaration will allow for "immediate response and resources to get city systems back to fully operational levels." In New York City , Mayor Eric Adams said the outage did not have a major impact on city operations because of previous drills that had been conducted to educate officials on how to respond to an IT issue. 

The FAA is working closely with airlines impacted by a global IT issue. This timelapse depicts air traffic recovering after airlines requested FAA assistance with ground stops this morning. Contact your airline for more info and monitor https://t.co/smgdqJN3td . pic.twitter.com/inRTK6ovTI — The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) July 19, 2024

In Europe, Lufthansa, KLM and SAS Airlines reported disruptions. Switzerland's largest airport reported planes had not been allowed to land, according to CBS News partner network BBC News. In India, at the country's primary airport in Delhi, everything was being done manually. No electric check-in terminals were functioning and gate information was being updated by hand on a whiteboard, the BBC reported.

Hospitals in Germany said they were canceling elective surgeries Friday and doctors in the U.K. said they were having issues accessing their online booking system. Pharmacists in the U.K. said there were disruptions with medicine deliveries and accessing prescriptions. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said there were no operational problems related to the outage, though some of its systems had been affected. Those systems have workarounds that allow their use even amid the outage. 

The London Stock Exchange said it had experienced disruptions to its regulatory news service, but that trading had not been impacted. A spokesperson for the New York Stock Exchange said markets were fully operational and a normal opening was expected.

Starbucks said the outage was preventing customers from using its mobile ordering features. Delivery companies like FedEx also reported that some packages could be delayed due to the outages.

"FedEx has activated contingency plans to mitigate impacts from a global IT outage experienced by a third party software vendor. However, potential delays are possible for package deliveries with a commitment of July 19, 2024," the company said in a statement.

When will the Microsoft outages be fixed?

Even with the fix being implemented by CrowdStrike, some of the problems caused will likely take time to solve, Chief Information Officer at identity security firm CyberArk, Omer Grossman, told Reuters. He said the reason is that the problem has to do with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products that run on individual client computers.

"It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely and the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days," Grossman said.

In an interview with CNBC, CrowdStrike's Kurtz said many of the affected systems were already beginning to recover, and a fix could be as straightforward for some clients as rebooting their computers or servers.

He acknowledged, however, that "some systems may not fully recover, and we're working individually with each and every customer to make sure we can get them up and running and operational." 

Kurtz did not provide a timeframe, and it appeared that many companies and organizations around the world would have to rely on their own technology departments to get systems back up and running.

— Kris Van Cleave contributed to this report.  

• CrowdStrike
• Internet Outage

Haley Ott is the CBS News Digital international reporter, based in the CBS News London bureau.

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Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide

Airlines, hospitals and people’s computers were affected after CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, sent out a flawed software update.

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By Adam Satariano ,  Paul Mozur ,  Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel

• July 19, 2024

Airlines grounded flights. Operators of 911 lines could not respond to emergencies. Hospitals canceled surgeries. Retailers closed for the day. And the actions all traced back to a batch of bad computer code.

A flawed software update sent out by a little-known cybersecurity company caused chaos and disruption around the world on Friday. The company, CrowdStrike , based in Austin, Texas, makes software used by multinational corporations, government agencies and scores of other organizations to protect against hackers and online intruders.

But when CrowdStrike sent its update on Thursday to its customers that run Microsoft Windows software, computers began to crash.

The fallout, which was immediate and inescapable, highlighted the brittleness of global technology infrastructure. The world has become reliant on Microsoft and a handful of cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike. So when a single flawed piece of software is released over the internet, it can almost instantly damage countless companies and organizations that depend on the technology as part of everyday business.

“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Center and a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

A cyberattack did not cause the widespread outage, but the effects on Friday showed how devastating the damage can be when a main artery of the global technology system is disrupted. It raised broader questions about CrowdStrike’s testing processes and what repercussions such software firms should face when flaws in their code cause major disruptions.

How a Software Update Crashed Computers Around the World

Here’s a visual explanation for how a faulty software update crippled machines.

How the airline cancellations rippled around the world (and across time zones)

Share of canceled flights at 25 airports on Friday

50% of flights

Ai r po r t

Bengalu r u K empeg o wda

Dhaka Shahjalal

Minneapolis-Saint P aul

Stuttga r t

Melbou r ne

Be r lin B r anden b urg

London City

Amsterdam Schiphol

Chicago O'Hare

Raleigh−Durham

B r adl e y

Cha r lotte

Reagan National

Philadelphia

1:20 a.m. ET

CrowdStrike’s stock price so far this year

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• How to write a lab report

How To Write A Lab Report | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples

Published on May 20, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A lab report conveys the aim, methods, results, and conclusions of a scientific experiment. The main purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method by performing and evaluating a hands-on lab experiment. This type of assignment is usually shorter than a research paper .

Lab reports are commonly used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This article focuses on how to structure and write a lab report.

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Table of contents

Structuring a lab report, introduction, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about lab reports.

The sections of a lab report can vary between scientific fields and course requirements, but they usually contain the purpose, methods, and findings of a lab experiment .

Each section of a lab report has its own purpose.

• Title: expresses the topic of your study
• Abstract : summarizes your research aims, methods, results, and conclusions
• Introduction: establishes the context needed to understand the topic
• Method: describes the materials and procedures used in the experiment
• Results: reports all descriptive and inferential statistical analyses
• Discussion: interprets and evaluates results and identifies limitations
• Conclusion: sums up the main findings of your experiment
• References: list of all sources cited using a specific style (e.g. APA )
• Appendices : contains lengthy materials, procedures, tables or figures

Although most lab reports contain these sections, some sections can be omitted or combined with others. For example, some lab reports contain a brief section on research aims instead of an introduction, and a separate conclusion is not always required.

If you’re not sure, it’s best to check your lab report requirements with your instructor.

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Your title provides the first impression of your lab report – effective titles communicate the topic and/or the findings of your study in specific terms.

Create a title that directly conveys the main focus or purpose of your study. It doesn’t need to be creative or thought-provoking, but it should be informative.

• The effects of varying nitrogen levels on tomato plant height.
• Testing the universality of the McGurk effect.
• Comparing the viscosity of common liquids found in kitchens.

An abstract condenses a lab report into a brief overview of about 150–300 words. It should provide readers with a compact version of the research aims, the methods and materials used, the main results, and the final conclusion.

Think of it as a way of giving readers a preview of your full lab report. Write the abstract last, in the past tense, after you’ve drafted all the other sections of your report, so you’ll be able to succinctly summarize each section.

To write a lab report abstract, use these guiding questions:

• What is the wider context of your study?
• What research question were you trying to answer?
• How did you perform the experiment?
• What did your results show?
• How did you interpret your results?
• What is the importance of your findings?

Nitrogen is a necessary nutrient for high quality plants. Tomatoes, one of the most consumed fruits worldwide, rely on nitrogen for healthy leaves and stems to grow fruit. This experiment tested whether nitrogen levels affected tomato plant height in a controlled setting. It was expected that higher levels of nitrogen fertilizer would yield taller tomato plants.

Levels of nitrogen fertilizer were varied between three groups of tomato plants. The control group did not receive any nitrogen fertilizer, while one experimental group received low levels of nitrogen fertilizer, and a second experimental group received high levels of nitrogen fertilizer. All plants were grown from seeds, and heights were measured 50 days into the experiment.

The effects of nitrogen levels on plant height were tested between groups using an ANOVA. The plants with the highest level of nitrogen fertilizer were the tallest, while the plants with low levels of nitrogen exceeded the control group plants in height. In line with expectations and previous findings, the effects of nitrogen levels on plant height were statistically significant. This study strengthens the importance of nitrogen for tomato plants.

Your lab report introduction should set the scene for your experiment. One way to write your introduction is with a funnel (an inverted triangle) structure:

• Start with the broad, general research topic
• Narrow your topic down your specific study focus
• End with a clear research question

Begin by providing background information on your research topic and explaining why it’s important in a broad real-world or theoretical context. Describe relevant previous research on your topic and note how your study may confirm it or expand it, or fill a gap in the research field.

This lab experiment builds on previous research from Haque, Paul, and Sarker (2011), who demonstrated that tomato plant yield increased at higher levels of nitrogen. However, the present research focuses on plant height as a growth indicator and uses a lab-controlled setting instead.

Next, go into detail on the theoretical basis for your study and describe any directly relevant laws or equations that you’ll be using. State your main research aims and expectations by outlining your hypotheses .

Based on the importance of nitrogen for tomato plants, the primary hypothesis was that the plants with the high levels of nitrogen would grow the tallest. The secondary hypothesis was that plants with low levels of nitrogen would grow taller than plants with no nitrogen.

Your introduction doesn’t need to be long, but you may need to organize it into a few paragraphs or with subheadings such as “Research Context” or “Research Aims.”

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A lab report Method section details the steps you took to gather and analyze data. Give enough detail so that others can follow or evaluate your procedures. Write this section in the past tense. If you need to include any long lists of procedural steps or materials, place them in the Appendices section but refer to them in the text here.

You should describe your experimental design, your subjects, materials, and specific procedures used for data collection and analysis.

Experimental design

Briefly note whether your experiment is a within-subjects  or between-subjects design, and describe how your sample units were assigned to conditions if relevant.

A between-subjects design with three groups of tomato plants was used. The control group did not receive any nitrogen fertilizer. The first experimental group received a low level of nitrogen fertilizer, while the second experimental group received a high level of nitrogen fertilizer.

Describe human subjects in terms of demographic characteristics, and animal or plant subjects in terms of genetic background. Note the total number of subjects as well as the number of subjects per condition or per group. You should also state how you recruited subjects for your study.

List the equipment or materials you used to gather data and state the model names for any specialized equipment.

List of materials

35 Tomato seeds

15 plant pots (15 cm tall)

Light lamps (50,000 lux)

Nitrogen fertilizer

Measuring tape

Describe your experimental settings and conditions in detail. You can provide labelled diagrams or images of the exact set-up necessary for experimental equipment. State how extraneous variables were controlled through restriction or by fixing them at a certain level (e.g., keeping the lab at room temperature).

Light levels were fixed throughout the experiment, and the plants were exposed to 12 hours of light a day. Temperature was restricted to between 23 and 25℃. The pH and carbon levels of the soil were also held constant throughout the experiment as these variables could influence plant height. The plants were grown in rooms free of insects or other pests, and they were spaced out adequately.

Your experimental procedure should describe the exact steps you took to gather data in chronological order. You’ll need to provide enough information so that someone else can replicate your procedure, but you should also be concise. Place detailed information in the appendices where appropriate.

In a lab experiment, you’ll often closely follow a lab manual to gather data. Some instructors will allow you to simply reference the manual and state whether you changed any steps based on practical considerations. Other instructors may want you to rewrite the lab manual procedures as complete sentences in coherent paragraphs, while noting any changes to the steps that you applied in practice.

If you’re performing extensive data analysis, be sure to state your planned analysis methods as well. This includes the types of tests you’ll perform and any programs or software you’ll use for calculations (if relevant).

First, tomato seeds were sown in wooden flats containing soil about 2 cm below the surface. Each seed was kept 3-5 cm apart. The flats were covered to keep the soil moist until germination. The seedlings were removed and transplanted to pots 8 days later, with a maximum of 2 plants to a pot. Each pot was watered once a day to keep the soil moist.

The nitrogen fertilizer treatment was applied to the plant pots 12 days after transplantation. The control group received no treatment, while the first experimental group received a low concentration, and the second experimental group received a high concentration. There were 5 pots in each group, and each plant pot was labelled to indicate the group the plants belonged to.

50 days after the start of the experiment, plant height was measured for all plants. A measuring tape was used to record the length of the plant from ground level to the top of the tallest leaf.

In your results section, you should report the results of any statistical analysis procedures that you undertook. You should clearly state how the results of statistical tests support or refute your initial hypotheses.

The main results to report include:

• any descriptive statistics
• statistical test results
• the significance of the test results
• estimates of standard error or confidence intervals

The mean heights of the plants in the control group, low nitrogen group, and high nitrogen groups were 20.3, 25.1, and 29.6 cm respectively. A one-way ANOVA was applied to calculate the effect of nitrogen fertilizer level on plant height. The results demonstrated statistically significant ( p = .03) height differences between groups.

Next, post-hoc tests were performed to assess the primary and secondary hypotheses. In support of the primary hypothesis, the high nitrogen group plants were significantly taller than the low nitrogen group and the control group plants. Similarly, the results supported the secondary hypothesis: the low nitrogen plants were taller than the control group plants.

These results can be reported in the text or in tables and figures. Use text for highlighting a few key results, but present large sets of numbers in tables, or show relationships between variables with graphs.

You should also include sample calculations in the Results section for complex experiments. For each sample calculation, provide a brief description of what it does and use clear symbols. Present your raw data in the Appendices section and refer to it to highlight any outliers or trends.

The Discussion section will help demonstrate your understanding of the experimental process and your critical thinking skills.

In this section, you can:

• Interpret your results
• Compare your findings with your expectations
• Identify any sources of experimental error
• Explain any unexpected results
• Suggest possible improvements for further studies

Interpreting your results involves clarifying how your results help you answer your main research question. Report whether your results support your hypotheses.

• Did you measure what you sought out to measure?
• Were your analysis procedures appropriate for this type of data?

Compare your findings with other research and explain any key differences in findings.

• Are your results in line with those from previous studies or your classmates’ results? Why or why not?

An effective Discussion section will also highlight the strengths and limitations of a study.

• Did you have high internal validity or reliability?
• How did you establish these aspects of your study?

When describing limitations, use specific examples. For example, if random error contributed substantially to the measurements in your study, state the particular sources of error (e.g., imprecise apparatus) and explain ways to improve them.

The results support the hypothesis that nitrogen levels affect plant height, with increasing levels producing taller plants. These statistically significant results are taken together with previous research to support the importance of nitrogen as a nutrient for tomato plant growth.

However, unlike previous studies, this study focused on plant height as an indicator of plant growth in the present experiment. Importantly, plant height may not always reflect plant health or fruit yield, so measuring other indicators would have strengthened the study findings.

Another limitation of the study is the plant height measurement technique, as the measuring tape was not suitable for plants with extreme curvature. Future studies may focus on measuring plant height in different ways.

The main strengths of this study were the controls for extraneous variables, such as pH and carbon levels of the soil. All other factors that could affect plant height were tightly controlled to isolate the effects of nitrogen levels, resulting in high internal validity for this study.

Your conclusion should be the final section of your lab report. Here, you’ll summarize the findings of your experiment, with a brief overview of the strengths and limitations, and implications of your study for further research.

Some lab reports may omit a Conclusion section because it overlaps with the Discussion section, but you should check with your instructor before doing so.

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A lab report conveys the aim, methods, results, and conclusions of a scientific experiment . Lab reports are commonly assigned in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method with a hands-on lab experiment. Course instructors will often provide you with an experimental design and procedure. Your task is to write up how you actually performed the experiment and evaluate the outcome.

In contrast, a research paper requires you to independently develop an original argument. It involves more in-depth research and interpretation of sources and data.

A lab report is usually shorter than a research paper.

The sections of a lab report can vary between scientific fields and course requirements, but it usually contains the following:

• Abstract: summarizes your research aims, methods, results, and conclusions
• References: list of all sources cited using a specific style (e.g. APA)
• Appendices: contains lengthy materials, procedures, tables or figures

The results chapter or section simply and objectively reports what you found, without speculating on why you found these results. The discussion interprets the meaning of the results, puts them in context, and explains why they matter.

In qualitative research , results and discussion are sometimes combined. But in quantitative research , it’s considered important to separate the objective results from your interpretation of them.

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2024 DDoS Attack Trends

Figure 1. Screenshot of DDoS-as-a-Service website after seizure by Europol

Figure 2: Most targeted CVEs by malicious internet-wide scans

Figure 3: Regional comparison of DDoS attack frequency and peak bandwidth

Figure 5: Box-whisker plot of attack peak bandwidth over 2023

Figure 6: Frequency distribution of peak attack size across 2023

Figure 8: Traffic pattern of a retailer under DoS attack caused by web scraping bots

Figure 9: Distribution of target layers over 2022 and 2023

Figure 10: MITRE ATT&CK categorization for attacks throughout 2023

Figure 11: Attack frequency distribution by attack size, per attack layer

Figure 16: Frequency of DDoS attacks in 2023 by website rank

Figure 17: Peak attack sizes targeting the Bank and Financial Services industries in 2023

Figure 18: Distribution of attack vectors targeting the Bank and Financial Services industries in 2023

Figure 19: Distribution of attack vectors hitting the Banking industry in 2023

Figure 20: Distribution of attack vectors hitting the Financial Services industry in 2023

Figure 21: Peak attack sizes targeting the Telecommunications industry in 2023

Figure 22: Distribution of attacks against the Telecommunications industry in 2023

Figure 23: Distribution of attack vectors targeting the Telecommunications industry in 2023

Figure 24: Peak attack sizes targeting the Software and Computer Services industry in 2023

Figure 25: Distribution of attack types against the Software and Computer Services industry in 2023

Figure 26: Distribution of attack vectors targeting the Software and Computer Services industry in 2023

Figure 27: Peak attack sizes targeting the Support Services industry in 2023

Figure 28: Distribution of attack types against the Software and Support Services industry in 2023

Figure 29: Distribution of attack vectors targeting the Software and Support Services industry in 2023

Figure 30: Peak attack sizes targeting the Media industry in 2023

Figure 31: Distribution of attack types against the Media industry in 2023

Figure 32: Distribution of attack vectors targeting the Media industry in 2023

Figure 33: Ranking of most DDoS'd countries in 2023

Figure 34: DDoS incidents for the six most attacked countries in 2023

Figure 35: Frequency of peak attack sizes for EMEA in 2023

Figure 36: Frequency of attacks in EMEA by industry in 2023

Figure 37: Proportion of DDoS attack types targeting EMEA in 2023

Figure 38: Frequency of peak attack sizes for North America in 2023

Figure 39: Frequency of attacks in North America by industry in 2023

Figure 40: Frequency of attacks in North America by industry in 2023

Introduction

The OWASP Top 10 has not called out denial of service (DoS) attacks as a top threat to web applications for over twenty years. Published way back in 2004, the second OWASP Top 10 list awarded the number nine spot (known as A9) to “Application Denial of Service” attacks. Since the 2004 edition, however, threats posed by DoS attacks have been rolled up into other categories such as Broken Access Control.

We think it may be time for DoS to make a reappearance in the forthcoming 2024 OWASP Top 10.

Through a combination of geopolitical unrest, trivially exploited vulnerabilities, and the emergence of new botnets, denial of service incidents have exploded since our 2023 DDoS Attack Trends report in February 2023. With the seemingly unstoppable growth in denial-of-service attack frequency and sizes, it begs the question: are we as an industry doing enough to thwart the risk and impact of DDoS?

By combining analysis of the DoS incidents encountered by the F5 Distributed Cloud service with insights from security engineers in the Security Incident Response Team (SIRT) and the Threat Analytics and Reporting (TAR) teams, we have been able to paint a detailed and insightful picture into the current state of DoS attacks being used by threat actors all over the world. This report focuses on the attacks and trends seen during 2023 but includes a brief insight into new attacks and trends observed in the first half of 2024.

[back to top]

Executive Summary

Distributed denial of service attacks have seen enormous growth regardless of which way you measure them. Frequency of incidents, average peak bandwidth, and complexity of attacks are all increasing, and it appears that no organization is safe.

Organizations are being attacked in almost equal measure, regardless of their geographic location, the size of the company, or the industry to which they are most closely aligned, though there are some exceptions to this. Notably America, France, and the UK, saw significant spikes in DDoS activity which align closely to geopolitical events playing out on the global stage. This reinforces the understanding that unskilled but politically motivated individuals are increasingly making use of DDoS servers (stressors) and botnets in an attempt to make their voice heard.

The Software and Computer Services industry saw the most activity throughout 2023, with Telecommunications also suffering persistent attacks. Virtually all sectors saw significant growth in attacks in 2023 compared with the previous year. Software and Computer services attacks doubled, but the Telecommunications and Banking industries saw explosive growth with each seeing an approximate fivefold increase in incidents.

Other notable findings from this report include:

• Attacks more than doubled in 2023 compared with 2022, growing almost 112%.
• The biggest attack of 2023 was in March and peaked at 1Tbps, targeting an organization in the Support Services 1 sector.
• That same organization also suffered the most attacks across the year, 187 in total.
• The mean number of attacks withstood was 11, meaning each organization dealt with a denial-of-service incident almost once month.
• Overall, DNS QUERY attacks were responsible for the vast majority of overall DDoS attacks being seen in 26% of events through 2023.
• Individual industries saw some differences, with BFSI in particular seeing more TCP SYN floods that anything else.
• Software and Computer Services was the most attacked industry in 2023 comprising 36% of all attacks. Telecommunications took second place, followed up Support Services, BFSI, and Media.
• Telecoms saw the biggest jump in the number of attacks it faced.
• Attack sizes remained high throughout the year with attacks consistently above 100Gbps, and many over 500Gbps. February was the outlier with the biggest attack of that month reaching less than 10Gbps.
• Recent activity seen in the first half of 2024 points to continued growth with threat actors increasing their efforts to compromise IoT devices and subsume them into their botnets.

DDoS is Dead! Long Live DDoS!

Denial of Service attacks are approaching their middle age. It is almost 30 years since the first recorded attack which targeted the internet service provider Panix in September 1996. Almost three decades later we continue to see DoS evolve with emerging attack vectors affecting new protocols (HTTP/2) and old ones (DNS), alike.

Although the latter half of 2022 and the start of 2023 saw law enforcement making significant progress in the battle against DDoS-as-a-Service providers, the rapid recovery of organized crime and the announcement of new DoS attack vectors means that the relative calm was short lived.

One Step Forward: Global Takedowns

A large proportion of global denial of service traffic originates from malicious DDoS-as-a-Service platforms, hosted and run by organized crime gangs. It makes sense, therefore, that law enforcement agencies invest significant effort in to bringing down these so-called “booters” or “stressors”. This is exactly what happened in December 2022. Europol, working with agencies from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland, and Germany, took down around fifty of the world’s biggest stressors (Figure 1). 2

The effect of this operation can’t be overstated. The decline in DDoS traffic in the months after the takedowns was profound, as we’ll uncover as we dive in the numbers later in this report. February 2023 was, in particular, a very quiet month. Attack frequency was down considerably, as were the size of attacks. The largest attack seen in February measured only 7 Gbps.

Threat actors recovered quickly, however, with March witnessing the largest attack of the year coming in at 1 Tbps.

International take-down operations, such as those led by Europol, continue to be an important part of combatting organized cybercrime. One stressor taken down in the December 2022 operation was believed to have been responsible for 30 million attacks. For the most part, however, the focus of law enforcement is on the individuals who break the law, not the devices used to carry out the attacks. Websites and domains are also seized, but until the compromised devices which make up a DDoS botnet are taken care of, they remain in place just waiting for a new crime gang to co-opt them for their own purposes.

One Step Back: The Mozi DDoS Botnet

This report focuses on DDoS attacks which took place over the course of 2023. We would be remiss, however, to not address the huge rise in DDoS activity seen at the start of 2024. As recently covered in the April 2024 edition of the Sensor Intel Series, threat actors have been using new vulnerabilities to build DDoS botnets from TP-Link and Netgear routers , among others.

CVE-2023-1389, a command injection vulnerability in the firmware for the TP-Link Archer AX21 Wi-Fi routers accounts for 40% of malicious scanning activity during April 2024 (see Figure 2). Exploit code for this CVE indicates that attackers are using it to take over vulnerable devices and subsume them into the Mozi botnet.

The Mozi botnet has been documented as able to conduct HTTP, TCP, UDP, and other attacks. More information can be found in the April 2024 Sensor Intel Series article.

And Another Step Back: Emerging DDoS Attack Vectors

Http/2 abuse.

The relatively new HTTP/2 protocol (new in internet terms, since the protocol is now almost ten years old) recently came under the spotlight of security researchers. The latter half of 2024 and start of 2024 saw not one, but two, new vulnerabilities which could create denial-of-service conditions even when HTTP/2 implementations followed the RFC to the letter. This is a big deal. Oftentimes it is a specific implementation of an RFC which is found to be vulnerable. In both following cases involving HTTP/2, however, all implementations are potentially vulnerable since the RFC itself did not consider all potential vectors of abuse.

HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

The first HTTP/2 denial-of-service vulnerability, eventually published under CVE-2023-44487, was first discovered by Google after mitigating the largest application layer attacks ever seen. It is well defined by the CERT-EU security advisory: 1

The vulnerability exploits a weakness in the HTTP/2 protocol, allowing attackers to generate hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks. The attack involves sending a large number of HTTP/2 streams and immediately cancelling them, creating a cost asymmetry between the client and server. The attacker exploits the RST_STREAM and GOAWAY frames of the HTTP/2 protocol to manipulate the connection. This leaves the server doing significant work for cancelled requests while the client pays almost no costs.

HTTP/2 Continuation Frame Attack

The second HTTP/2 DoS vulnerability was announced in May 2024 and, for anyone that remembers it, shares a theme with the Slow Post denial of service attack method. 2

The binary HTTP/2 protocol features multiple types of ‘frames’. Some are used as Headers, others contain Data to be sent between the client and server. Other frame types also exist and one of them is known as a Continuation frame. This is used to signal to the server that the client has more data to send so the connection should be left open. A malicious HTTP/2 client is able to send an arbitrary number of Continuation frames to the server and exhaust its available memory. The F5 DevCentral community has a great write up on HTTP/2 Continuation Frame Attacks .

The CERT Coordination Center details Vulnerability Note VU#421644 and it is this article that should be used to look for CVEs against specific HTTP/2 implementations. 3

Attackers making use of UDP floods often benefit from the ability to spoof the source IP address which results in ineffectual IP based blocking. UDP packets, however, still require that traffic is generated from a malicious or compromised clients (zombies) in a botnet. Loop DoS, by contrast, needs no such botnet. A single malicious request to Alice results in a flood of traffic to Bob. Bob then responds to Alice, generating yet more unwanted traffic. 4 Essentially, Alice and Bob are tricked into  attacking each. Despite this potential attack vector being known since 1996, it was only revealed as a practical attack method in March 2024 with protocols such TFTP, DNS, NTP, Echo and Chargen open to exploit. 5 A reported 300,000 servers were potentially vulnerable to this attack. 6

As if DNS hasn’t already been exploited enough for denial of service attack vectors (such as NXDOMAIN attacks as well as DNS reflection floods) yet another exploit was revealed for this much beleaguered protocol. Just as with the HTTP/2 based attacks, this method exploits not a vulnerability, but deliberate mechanisms defined within the RFC 1035 specification.

Researchers determined that by making use of availability, security, and reliability features of DNS, it is possible to accumulate DNS queries such that all responses are let loose at once in “pulsing bursts”, which could result in a potential denial of service situation. Individual DNS vendors have issued their own CVEs but an industry-wide CVE was also published under CVE-2024-33655. 7

2023 DDoS Attack Trends

After slow but marked decline in DoS attacks over recent years, 2023 saw a staggering increase compared with 2022. DDoS attacks have not only become more prevalent, in part due to their commoditisation and ease of use, but also due to rising global tensions and the ease with which hacktivists can launch an attack.

DDoS Attacks Explode in 2023

The global map shown in Figure 3 provides a glanceable view of the attacks seen by F5 Distributed Cloud over the course of 2023. While the number of attacks encountered by each region appears to vary drastically, the frequency of incidents is directly proportional to the number of customers in any given region. What does mean? Regardless of the postal address of an organization’s headquarters, or the virtual address of its IPv4 space, attackers care not for geographical boundaries. While individual counties do see more incidents than others, no one continent is worse than any other when averaging out countries in that region. We dive in to regional and country-level comparisons later in this report.

Looking at total incidents, we found that DDoS attacks more than doubled over 2023, exploding from just over 1,000 in 2022 to more than 2,100 a year later (see Figure 4).

The mean number of attacks each organization faced was just over 11 across 2023, almost one a month. Needless to say, some businesses faced more attacks than others. One unfortunate Software & Computer Services firm withstood a staggering 127 attacks over the course of the year. However, this was far from the most attacked organization. One company stole the unenviable crown for most targeted, suffering a whopping 187 individual DDoS incidents in 2023. This company, found in the Support Services industry, was also unlucky enough to be the victim of the largest attack we saw in the year.

Average Peak Attack Sizes Grow

Although the F5 Distributed Cloud service hasn’t seen an incident as large as the 1.4Tbps attack which it mitigated in 2021 , it came close in March 2023 when it blocked an attack reaching 1Tbps (as Figure 5). Threat actors attempted to take down the aforementioned Support Services organization with a deluge of TCP SYN packets. Most months in 2023 saw peak attack sizes of 100-200 Gbps or greater, with February being the only significant outlier, seeing only a relatively tiny 5Gbps attack.

While Figure 5 is useful to visualise largest and smallest of all attacks, the box-whisker plot is perhaps more useful to determine the most frequent attack sizes. The lower quartile of peak attack sizes varied very little throughout 2023 with the lowest 25% of attacks reaching only 30-50Mbps. However (noting the logarithmic scale on the y-axis of Figure 5) the upper quartile saw steady and significant growth, indicating the steady rise in average attack bandwidth. January’s upper quartile reached only 100Mbps with the year ending at 900Mbps attacks in December.

Figure 5: Box-whisker plot of attack peak bandwidth over 2023 (note the logarithmic scale on the y-axis)

Let’s change the view to dive in to attack sizes further. The histogram in Figure 6 uses logarithmic binning on the x-axis in order visualize how often certain attack sizes occur, but what can we learn from this? Well, we can see that attacks peaking at 50-200Mbps in size are by far the most common.

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Attack sizes of 50-200 Mbps would suggest that they are trivial to mitigate, especially considering the widespread adoption of fibre broadband and many home users enjoying connections well up to 1Gbps. As we examine later in this report, however, saturation of a network connection is rarely the sole objective of DoS attackers.

Preferred Attacker Techniques

As we’ve seen so far DDoS attacks are, on average, getting larger and more common but what techniques and attack vectors are being favoured by threat actors? Previous F5 Labs DDoS Attack Trends reports have shown a slow increase in attacks which relied on the TCP. 1 This made sense considering we also saw an increase in application-based attacks which, at least for HTTP(S) applications, required a TCP connection. That trend is slowly reversing, however, with UDP being used to deliver 4x more attacks than TCP, and 8x more than ICMP (Figure 7). With the web slowly moving from HTTP/2 (a TCP based protocol) to QUIC and HTTP/3 (which uses UDP) we expect to see this trend grow at an increasing rate over the coming years.

Note: Since many attacks are multi-vector and will attack many apps across different protocols, the values for UDP, TCP, and ICMP combined will add up to more than the years’ total individual attacks.

Peak attack size, as showcased in Figure 5 and Figure 6, tells only part of the story. What ports, protocols, and applications are being attacked can be more important to understand since some DDoS attack vectors are significantly harder to protect against than others. Take, for example, what might appear to be a surge in web traffic. Is a sudden increase in HTTP GET requests sign of a successful marketing campaign, the result of a reseller bot attempting to purchase all inventory, or a layer 7 DDoS attack? Ultimately, if the webserver is overwhelmed and unable to serve pages to genuine customers, does it matter what the original intent was? The result is the same. Denial of service.

When is a DDoS Attack Not a DDoS Attack?

In May, June, July, and August of 2023 a major online retailer suffered a number of denial-of-service incidents. The July DDoS incident peaked at approximately 16,000 transactions per second (TPS), and was a simple HTTP GET flood targeting the home page of the retailer. Two attempts were made, each lasting approximately thirty minutes. Over 61,000 unique IP addresses were observed participating, from more than 4,000 different ASNs, suggesting a distributed botnet as the origin of the attack.

The DDoS events coincided with the retailer opening early access to new products. The goal of the attacker is believed to have been an attempt to disrupt access to the retailer during an important product release. Upon closer inspection of the malicious activity, however, it was noted that while some incidents were indeed directed DDoS attacks, many were the result of web scraping bots attempting to obtain product and pricing information. This web scraping was so intense that, on multiple occasions, it created denial of service conditions for genuine customers. The bot was easily identified since its traffic was all directed at product pages and was not found to follow common human flows.

By removing the DDoS traffic we can see that while this one incident dwarfed all other traffic observed during this timeframe. Positively identified malicious automation is in red, suspicious and flagged traffic is in yellow.

Distributed denial of service attacks are commonly grouped in to three layers, depending on their intent. Volumetric (also called ‘network’) attacks attempt to consume network bandwidth, protocol attacks try to overwhelm networking devices, while application attacks target the application stack itself and attempt to consume all available memory or CPU cycles. The MITRE ATT&CK framework takes a different approach. Our mapping of DDoS layers to those found in the ATT&CK model can be found in Table 1 (Appendix).

Using the standard model of DDoS attack layers (volumetric, protocol, application) we see a consistent 50% of attacks at focusing on the network layer (see Figure 9). These volumetric attacks combine direct network floods with reflection attacks in an attempt to saturate the networks delivering the application to users. Back in 2022 we saw a steady increase in application layer attacks (including HTTP(S) floods and DNS queries) and this growth peaked at just under 40% of all attacks by quarter 1 of 2023. Over the remainder of 2023 application focused attacks decreased to around 25% with protocol layer attacks picking up some of the slack.

Using the MITRE ATT&CK framework to categorise denial of service attacks paints much the same picture, if only in slightly more detail (Figure 10). Limitations in data collection prevent us from categorizing attacks under T1499.003 (Application Exhaustion Flood) and T1499.004 (Application or System Exploitation), though our case studies provide clear indication that these attack vectors are indeed under widespread use (see When is a DDoS Attack Not a DDoS Attack? ). Figure 10 also implies a fairly consistent spread of attack types over the year, save for the marked decrease in T1499.002 (Service Exhaustion Flood attacks).

Having considered attack frequency, attack size, and attack layer, what if we combine all three metrics? It is not until peeling back the layers, so to speak, that we can begin to understand the importance of attack frequency and the tiers at which they are attacked. Figure 11 shows individual histograms for application, protocol, and volumetric (network) attacks (note the logarithmic binning on the x-axis ).

At casual glance, it is already apparent of the vast discrepancy of peak attack size frequency based on the layer targeted by the attacker.

While volumetric attacks see a steady decline in frequency as we move from the small 100Mbps attacks through to the largest ones at 1Tbps, a very different story can be seen for attacks targeting the application tier. The overwhelming majority of application-focused DoS incidents are micro-DDoS attacks, ranging from 50Mbps to 200Mbps. Application focused attacks rarely result in large amounts of network bandwidth. While 50-200Mbps attacks sound trivial in nature, the complexity of mitigating these application focused attacks is anything but.

Digging down one more layer, let’s look at which application or protocol is being focused on. Previous reports have shown that generic UDP floods or DNS reflection attacks were most popular attack vector of the past few years. This year we see a notable change.

Over 2023, DNS QUERY (also known as NXDOMAIN attacks) were by far the most common, at least when evaluating all industries together (see Figure 12). As we will examine later, some industries are being targeted in different ways. While DNS reflection (T1498.002 Reflection Amplification, as categorised by MITRE) is actually a form of volumetric/reflection attacks, NXDOMAIN attacks send genuine queries to a DNS server for domains that don’t exist. By sending queries for spurious non-existent domains the DNS server is compelled to perform a lookup and then return an NXDOMAIN error. The quantity of requests consumes the resources of the DNS server, preventing genuine users from resolving a domain into the IP address their device needs in order to find and connect to the service they require. Attacking DNS servers allow attackers to take down multiple sites and services at once. In 2016, a DDoS attack targeting DynDNS and the resulting outage took down dozens of the world leading sites, including the BBC, Netflix, and Paypal.

2023 DDoS Attacks by Industry

How do attacks differ by industry? Do threat actors focus more on some sectors than others, and do their tactics vary between them? We dove deep in to the data to try and answer these questions. For those interested, see how we classified organizations in the Methodology section.

Industry Trends

For each industry, we examined the frequency of attacks, peak bandwidth, and the most commonly targeted layer (network/volumetric, protocol, and application). While there is some correlation between frequency and attack sizes, that relationship is not always present.

Software and Computer Services was the most attacked sector in 2022 and remains so in 2023, having suffered double the number of attacks compared with the previous year (see Figure 13). This industry includes organizations which create applications, and also cloud hosting services such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Just as with DNS NXDOMAIN attacks, if a threat actor is able to affect a cloud service they have the potential to take out multiple organizations, not just a single one.

The second most attacked industry was telecommunications, but it takes the top spot for biggest increase in attacks. These organizations suffered a staggering five fold increase in attacks in 2023 compared with the previous year. Banks and Media also saw significant increases in attacks, well above the average for all industries combined.

A small number of industries were fortunate to encounter a small decline in the number of attacks they faced. Government, Government Agencies, Food & Drug Retailers, Real Estate, and Technology Hardware organizations, all saw a small drop in the number of incidents targeting them.

Those industries with the most incidents are not always the same ones defending from the largest of attacks. Figure 14 shows that the Support Services industry withstood the largest attack of 2023, weighing in at 1Tbps. The Support Services industry is defined as organizations offering HR, Payroll, and related services to other businesses. It is possible that organizations in this industry were directly targeted, but it is equally possible that they were hit due to the businesses they provided services to.

The Software and Computer Services industry, despite being the most attacked, only encountered DDoS incidents of 200Gbps or smaller.

As we examined previously, volumetric attacks account for, on average, 50% of all DDoS incidents over the course of 2023. Diving in to individual industries, however, shows considerable variation in attacker focus.

Over 60% of attacks against the Support Services industry were targeting the application layer (Figure 15). Contrast this with Banks who saw relatively few attacks at this layer and, instead, faced more protocol attacks than any other type.

By Website Rank

Does a high website ranking attract more DDoS attacks? Are small organizations (typically found toward the bottom of the world’s 1 million most popular sites) out of sight and, therefore, out of mind? (See Methodology in the Appendix to understand how we rank sites).

These are the questions we attempted to answer in Figure 16 (note that F5 Distributed Cloud has customers found at the very top of the top 1M sites, but only as far down as 100,000 in the rankings). In this histogram we can see that sites towards the top of the 1M list do indeed face more attacks, but a considerable number of incidents can still be found targeting sites regardless of their ranking. This plot is a useful reminder that all organizations, regardless of their size or ranking, are possible targets for DDoS attacks.

Industry Breakdown

To what extent do threat actors modify and customize their DDoS attacks for each sector? Well, Figure 15 showed that attackers do indeed, coincidentally or otherwise, tend to prefer different attack methods for different types of organizations. We pick the five most attacked industries and dive deeper to see what else is hiding within the data.

Banking and Financial Services

Taken separately, Banks and the closely related industry of Financial Services rank 5 th and 6 th , respectively, when considering the total number of DDoS attacks. When combined, however, they place joint 3 rd accounting for 11% of all incidents. Together, they witnessed a 140% increase in attacks compared with 2022.

Attacks throughout 2023 saw a good deal of fluctuation with regard to the frequency and size of attacks. The largest, measuring 400Gbps at it’s peak, arrived in June – the quietest month for this combined industry. Only two other months, March and July, saw similarly large attacks with five months in 2023 having attacks peaking at only 5-6Gbps (Figure 17).

As hinted at in Figure 15, there appears to be a definite preference towards application layer attacks when targeting DDoS attacks at the Banks and Financial Services industries. Figure 18 has a more detailed breakdown of most attacked layers using the MITRE ATT&CK framework for additional detail. The increase in volumetric attacks (reflection attacks, to be specific) in Q4 of 2023 doesn’t detract from the fact that the vast majority of attempted DDoS attacks focus on the protocol tier (“OS” in ATT&CK parlance). This suggests that attackers know the majority of financial institutions are generally well protected from large volumetric attacks and their best chance is to target another layer in the stack.

Digging a little deeper, we find that both the Bank and Financial Services industries are the only two for which the most common attack vector is not DNS QUERY (at least for those industries for which we have a large enough sample size to draw accurate and safe conclusions). Figure 19 and Figure 20 reveal that TCP SYN floods were most common attack vectors.

Telecommunications

The telecoms industry saw an unenviable 655% growth in attacks and accounted for 23% of all DDoS incidents in 2023. January and February were the quiet months before the storm of the rest of the year. The largest attack didn’t arrive until December and peaked at 583 Gbps.

The first quarter of 2023 saw a definite focus towards application layer (service) attacks, though this preference appeared to dissipate over the rest of the year as volumetric and protocol attacks increased (Figure 22).

As with the majority of other industries, DNS QUERY (NXDOMAIN) attacks were most common, but DNS reflections and UDP floods were also heavily used as can be seen in Figure 23. Unlike the Banking and Financial Services industries, TCP SYN attacks occurred relatively infrequently.

Software & Computer Services

This industry saw a relatively modest growth in attack frequency, growing 113% from the previous year. Although Software and Computer Services firms accounted for 37% of all incidents in 2023, the attacks themselves were far smaller that other industries. Using Figure 24 we can identify that the largest attack came in November and peaked at just 200Gbps.

The industry saw attacks spread quite evenly across application, protocol, and volumetric layers. The ATT&CK perspective of DDoS incidents show some small variation from quarter to quarter (Figure 25). Attacks against the ‘service’ tier (application layer) remained slightly more common than others throughout 2023.

As with other industries, DNS QUERY (NXDOMAIN) attacks were the most common vector by a significant margin (see Figure 26).

Support Services

The Support Services sector is described as including firms which offer general management, human resources, administration, payroll, and facilities management to other organizations. While the number of incidents focused on this sector remained fairly flat compared with 2022, Support Services takes a podium finish in 2023. It was the third most attacked sector with 11% of all incidents and also suffered the largest attack of the year which came in March, and measured an impressive 1 Tbps (Figure 27).

As Figure 27 also highlights, massive fluctuations in attack frequency and peak attack sizes were seen throughout the year. The vast majority of incidents were mini-DDoS attacks (sub 1 Gbps) and micro-DDoS (sub 200 Mbps) which makes the 1 Tbps attack in March and the 500Gbps in incident in November really stand out.

This industry also stands apart from the crowd when considering the most commonly targeted ‘layer’. As Figure 28 shows, for most of the year, more than 60% of all DDoS attacks against Support Services business were targeting the application, or ‘service’ as defined by ATT&CK.

Attacks in this sector almost exclusively used DNS QUERY (NXDOMAIN) floods as evidenced in Figure 29.

With increased global tension comes increased reporting from the world’s press. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that attacks targeting Media grew by over 250% in 2023. The Mapping Media Freedom service shows similar growth with the number of reports of cyber attacks against media outlets jumping from only three in 2022, to 36 in 2023 (17 incidents targeting Hungarian media, and 6 focused on those in Ukraine). 1

Data from F5’s Distributed Cloud service shows a very quiet start to 2023, in part due to the takedown of DDoS stressors in December 2022. Incidents grew rapidly from April onwards, however, with attacks typically reaching 20-90 Gbps (Figure 30).

January through March, and October through December were comparatively quite months for the Media industry with respect to DDoS attacks. It is therefore interesting that quarters 1 and 4 had relatively high proportions of application layer attacks (Figure 31). This implies that the additional in attacks, seen in April through September, were predominantly volumetric.

As with most other industries, incidents against Media were conducting primarily using DNS QUERY (NXDOMAIN) attacks (see Figure 32).

2023 DDoS Attacks by Region

We kicked off this report with a high level look at attacks by global regions but what of individual countries? And, when it comes to the internet with global routing and the ability to forge IP addressed in UDP packets, how can we accurately attribute attacks to any one country? We explain more in Methodology (Appendix) but, simply put, when classifying organizations by industry we also looked up the location of their global headquarters. Since threat actors predominantly target organizations, and not countries as a whole, it is important to not attribute the wrong motivations to attacks. It is more likely for a business to be attacked due to it’s business activity or political affiliations, rather than the country in which it operates.

With all of those caveats out of the way, let’s dig in to the details to see what patterns emerge.

Top Attacked Countries

While Figure 3 showed that Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) encountered almost 60% of all attacks for 2023, that is likely explained by the sheer number of countries in this region. North America (NAMER) accounted for 38% of all attacks but the United States of America took top spot for most attacked country. The USA had more than double the number of incidents compared to France, number two in the list of most attacked countries (Figure 33).

In fact, the old 80/20 rule holds mostly true here: just six countries account for 80% of all attacks. Figure 34 tracks the number of incidents over the past two years for the USA, France, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Belgium, and the UK. From it we can see a number of standout periods.

December 2022

The end of 2022 saw an unusual and significant spike in DDoS attacks against UK organizations, dropping off in January and February 2023 almost as quickly as they grew. In November 2022 the Killnet group , long affiliated to Russian state interests, claimed responsibility for targeting multiple UK sites making reference the UK’s supply of missiles to Ukraine. 1 It is believed that the continued attacks in December 2022 were similarly related to the UK’s support of Ukraine in their ongoing conflict. This period also saw considerable political activity in the UK with industrial strikes carried out in the rail, postal, and healthcare services.

February – March 2023

France saw relatively few DDoS incidents in 2022 which makes the sharp and sustained increase in 2023 most notable. Attacks exploded in February and March and this increase in activity was, at least in part, claimed by NoName057(16), another Russia-linked threat group. They claim to have targeted French sites due to announced pension reform. 2

The United States of America continued to take a leading role on the world stage during these months. Increasing tension with China, responses to North Korean missile tests, and its continued support for Ukraine, all provided ample incentives for politically motivated hacktivists.

August – September 2023

France and Belgium continued to take prominent roles in diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East, but France, in particular, drew ire from both sides of the debate all saw increased activity in this period.

Regional Breakdown

While many individual countries don’t contain enough data for us to draw accurate conclusions, taking a higher-level look at the continents within which they reside does allow us to tease out how attacks might different from region to region.

Europe, Middle East, and African (EMEA)

The EMEA region suffered 57% of all incidents in 2023 and witnessed a significant surge in DDoS attacks, with incidents more than tripling compared to 2022. Throughout the year, there was a marked and consistent increase in both the quantity of attacks and their peak bandwidth. The mean peak-bandwidth saw a dramatic rise from 50 Mbps in January to 5 Gbps by December. The largest attack occurred in June, measuring just under 500 Gbps (see Figure 35). The Software and Computer Services industry was the most frequently targeted, mirroring trends seen in North America (Figure 36). Additionally, the EMEA region experienced a substantial number of attacks against Telecommunications organizations, a stark contrast to the patterns observed in North America. At the beginning of 2023, 50% of all attacks in the EMEA region targeted the application layer; however, this proportion decreased significantly from the second quarter onwards (Figure 37).

North America (NAMER)

North America, the second most attacked region, experienced 37% of all DDoS incidents in 2023. A notable characteristic of this region is the relatively low proportion of volumetric (network) attacks, with 60% of all incidents targeting the protocol and application layers (see Figure 40). Despite a 140% growth in attacks, this increase was significantly less than in other regions. The Software and Computer Services sector was the most targeted, similar to the trend in EMEA. The second most attacked industry was Support Services, with one organization bearing the majority of these incidents (Figure 39). Attack frequency and peak bandwidth in North America fluctuated more throughout the year compared to EMEA. The largest attack occurred in March, peaking at 1 Tbps (Figure 38).

Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APCJ)

Our sample sizes for these regions are small enough that we don’t feel it is fair to try to draw strong conclusions. We recommend basing your assessment for these regions on the global averages or digging in to industry based conclusions.

The majority of industries and regions a saw significant growth in DDoS attacks over 2023 with many attacks directly attributable to geopolitical events throughout the year. In particular, Banking, Software and Computer Services, and the Telecommunications industries all saw dramatic increases in malicious activity compared with the previous year. Attacks grew so much in fact that, on average, businesses can be expected to deal with a DDoS attack around eleven times a year, almost once a month.

Attacker focus no longer seems to be on generating the largest possible amount of bandwidth. While large volumetric attacks are still an easy way for bad actors to cause disruption, very small micro and mini DDoS attacks are a far more common problem for businesses. On face value, small attacks appear to be trivial to cope with, yet their small size masks the true complexity of mitigation. For the majority of industries DNS NXDOMAIN attacks is the attacker tool of choice.

In addition, the non-human (bot) traffic scanning, scraping, and interacting with most websites will make it difficult for application owners to understand the cause of a degradation in service. Is it due to a well planned marketing campaign, an inability to identify and block automation, or a denial of service using the infamous SlowLoris attack, or perhaps a newer vector such as HTTP/2 Rapid Reset.

Recommendations

DDoS attacks are clearly here to stay and while many attacks are relatively short lived their impact to the business and its reputation can be long lasting. The simplest recommendation (although perhaps the least helpful) is to recommend a cloud scrubbing solution. A managed service, monitored by experts who deal with DDoS attacks every day and backed by multi-terabit bandwidth capabilities, certainly offers the widest protection possible and can often be deployed with very little disruption.

Data privacy and compliance reasons may mean that organizations in some sectors need to retain at least an element of on-prem DDoS mitigation, however. For those that aren’t able to wholly rely on a managed DDoS service the following recommendations address some of the biggest challenges in mitigating the risk of outage due to a denial of service attack.  

Protect DNS

As we’ve seen throughout this report, DNS NXDOMAIN attacks are the preferred attack vector for most threat actors. If you operate your own DNS servers which are responsible for resolving the domain names of your public facing sites, it is highly recommend to deploy a DNS firewall. A mature DNS security solution will shield from internal DNS servers from malicious DNS lookups, as well as provide additional security measures such as automatic DNSSEC signing, and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT).

Block Malicious IP Addresses

The majority of DDoS attacks are UDP based and, as such, source IP addresses are often forged by the attacker. Some sectors, such as Banks and Financial Services, have seen many TCP SYN floods. For these attacks, the ability to block known bad IP addresses is essential.

Identify Bots and Non-Human Traffic

Whether malicious automation is used to scrape a website for intellectual property or launch an application-layer denial of service attack, being able to differentiate bots from humans is becoming an essential part of any defence-in-depth strategy. Understand the capabilities you may have in-house and what can be provided by a cloud scrubbing service. In order to accurately identify non-human users it will be essential to terminate SSL/TLS connections to inspect the requests being sent to the origin (application) server. User-agents and other HTTP headers are forged by attackers so ensure the solution you pick is able to inspect the client device to determine whether it is a real user or a bot.

Gain Visibility

Although not often seen being used in the wild, the TLS handshake itself can be a target of denial of service attacks. Investigate where TLS is being terminated and whether the origin server, application delivery controller, or cloud scrubbing services, can handle a large volume of TLS connections and how it is able to deal with malicious attempts to overwhelm the TLS stack of the target device.

Beyond protecting TLS itself, it is important to be able to inspect inside the encrypted connection to look for malicious application requests. DNS, HTTP, and other protocols can be protected by TLS. But while this encryption layer prevents snooping and tampering, it also hinders security solutions unless they are the ones terminating the TLS handshake.

Patch, Patch, Patch!

The past year has seen a plethora of new DoS attack vectors, many of which rely on unpatched software or hardware solutions. If you are responsible for managing a fleet of internet-of-things (IoT) devices then it is important to ensure they are constantly patched and kept up to date, lest they be subsumed in to the latest DDoS botnet.

Be Aware of Geopolitical Events

Rising global tension and on-going wars have proven to be a clear catalyst for a growth in hacktivism. Cyber threat intelligence will provide a deeper insight in to threat actor activity and their intensions for conducting DDoS and other cyber attacks.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework provides a consistent way of understanding threats, and the controls which aim to mitigate associated risk. Uptake of ATT&CK is gaining adoption, though there are many in the security industry which still use alternative terminology. For this reason we thought it useful to map ATT&CK terminology to that used by F5 and many other researchers in the security field.  

F5 Labs believes in an ‘academic’ and transparent approach to research and publication. As such, we believe it’s important to understand the context and limitations of data so as not to draw incorrect conclusions.

Normalization

In reports such as this, there is always the question of whether to normalize calculations based on the sample size for any given attribute. We might, for example, find the proportion of attacks for each country based on the number of protected organizations in that region, rather than simple reporting the raw number of incidents. Normalizing data can be a way to provide a more consistent view of activity when comparing different attributes, such as country so long as the sample size is large enough. If France had one related organization and that organization received a single DDoS attack that could be interpreted to mean that 100% of organizations in France are being attacked. For this reason we have decided not to normalize data to account for the number of organizations per regions or industry. Instead we present to you the raw data and help you derive conclusions where possible.

Classifying Industries and Sectors

There exist only a few methods for mapping organizations to the industries and sectors in which they operate and matters are complicated when considering many large multi-nationals operate across many sectors. For example, a creator of plastics may be put in to the bucket of manufacturing, healthcare (if they use their plastics to create medical equipment), or even retail (should they extend their reach in to bottling up consumer goods).

For this report we have switched to a new method of identifying and classifying organizations. For this reason, readers may notice slight discrepancies between statistics and conclusions for industries in this report compared with previous publications.

We wanted a way to quickly and easily identify business based on their domain name so we turned to the BigPicture API. 14 BigPicture allows us retrieve a huge amount of data about organizations and while the data is all available publicly, the API means we can perform ad hoc and bulk lookups of domains, IP addresses, and company names. In return, we obtain the industry and sector for each business, and additional information such as number of employees and the location of that organization’s headquarters. We use this information to determine the country and regions for each company.

Many organizations will have offices located throughout the world, so it could be argued that deciding on one country to place a business in to is short sighted. We believe however, especially when it comes to hacktivism, many threat actors will pick targets based on specific grievances against that company, or pick any company which is based in the country they are protesting against.

By using the BigPicture API other researchers and security experts can obtain results consistent with ours which will allow for simpler verification of our findings and conclusions.

Website Ranking

In order to determine website ranking based solely on domain name we use the Tranco list which, by their own definition, is “a research-oriented top sites ranking hardened against manipulation”. Tranco combine a number of sources in order to provide, what we believe to be, the most unbiased and accurate representation of the world’s one million most popular websites. The Tranco list is provided as a downloadable file, and is accessible via BigQuery or via their API. 15

David Warburton is director of F5 Labs. He has worked in the IT industry for over 20 years, starting life as a full stack developer before wrangling with the perils of cloud architecture and then moving the serene and peaceful life of cyber security. His research covers a wide range of topics from the deeply technical, such as cryptography, to the more real-world sociotechnical side of security. Warburton has given talks around world for Infosec (UK), GovWare (Singapore), Crikeycon (Australia), ITBN (Hungary), Digital Transformation EXPO (UK) and for the UK military. Warburton has made dozens of international media appearances on TV, print and industry podcasts, including BBC World News, Sky News, SABC, The Guardian and Risky Business. He is the author of F5 Labs publications including the annual ‘Phishing and Fraud’ and ‘TLS Telemetry’ reports, and recently he co-authored the SSL/TLS/HTTPS scanning devops tool ‘Cryptonice’ which helps organisations improve their application security posture. Warburton was awarded a Masters in Information Security from Royal Holloway University of London where his thesis was on the use of security and cryptography in internet-of-things (IoT).

Malcolm Heath is a Senior Threat Researcher with F5 Labs.  His career has included incident response, program management, penetration testing, code auditing, vulnerability research, and exploit development at companies both very large and very small. Prior to joining F5 Labs, he was a Senior Security Engineer with the F5 SIRT.

1 Support Services are defined as entities which provide services such as HR, Payroll, and Finance to other organizations.

2 https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/global-crackdown-against-ddos-services-shuts-down-most-popular-platforms

3 https://www.cert.europa.eu/static/SecurityAdvisories/2023/CERT-EU-SA2023-074.pdf

4 https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2011/11/02/how-to-protect-against-slow-http-attacks

5 https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/421644

6 https://vuls.cert.org/confluence/display/historical/CERT+Advisory+CA-1996-01+UDP+Port+Denial-of-Service+Attack

7 https://cispa.de/en/loop-dos

8 https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/24/loop_ip_vulnerable/

9 https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2024-33655

10 https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/2023-ddos-attack-trends , https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/2022-application-protection-report-ddos-attack-trends

11 https://www.mapmf.org/explorer?q=Distributed+Denial+of+Service&f.from=2022-01-01&f.to=2023-12-31&f.type_of_incident=Hacking%2FDDoS&sort=timestamp%3Adesc

12 https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252527560/Killnet-DDoS-hacktivists-target-Royal-Family-and-others

13 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2023/03/27/france-s-assemblee-nationale-website-temporarily-blocked-by-a-group-of-pro-russian-hackers_6020872_13.html

14 https://bigpicture.io/

15 https://tranco-list.eu/

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Course Work On Firewall Test

For any computer device machine deprived of a firewall, then a personal or company computer has its operating open to attacks and this is considered risky. In recent occurrences, hacked computers have been subject to the passwords cracking, credit card numbers stealing, bank account information fraud, and virtually any sensitive information on stored on the computer becomes accessible to malicious computer hackers. In this case scenario hackers can get in, take what they want, and even leave an opening port they can frequently use to access the information over and over again without the owners noticing.

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It is always a frustrating experience when my computer screen freezes, it takes too long to start up or it takes too long to open programs and perform simple tasks. The main causes are a fragmented hard disk, running heavy programs with little ram, too many temporary files and a full hard disk. It is always important to defragment the computer’s hard disk if one wants to optimize computer speeds. This is because a fragmented hard disk takes a lot of time to find data and thus reduces my computer’s speed.

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In reference to the notice on your website concerning the vacancy in the IT department, I hereby apply for the job as a computer-programming specialist. I am 25 years of age and have recently completed my education in grade 12.

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Networking computers course work.

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275 words = 1 page double-spaced

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