Link Search Menu Expand Document
Publications
  1. DDoS as breakdown

DDoS as breakdown

There is, thus, an emerging debate about the relationship between breakdown and visibility within the broader field of infrastructure studies. As a specific kind of breakdown of communication infrastructure, DDoS attacks are a relevant phenomenon to consider in this regard. Accordingly, similar questions have been raised in this field of research, for example by Sauter:

A direct action DDoS seeks to strip away the attractive, humanized facade to reveal a corporate target’s reality as black boxed and monolithic, fundamentally unresponsive (metaphorically and actually) to human concerns. 61

In this sense, the temporary crisis of communication is ascribed a potential to reveal, to open up for scrutiny and to open up for new possibilities. Beck strikes a similar chord when discussing the deterritorialising effect of DDoS attacks and pointing out how these “changed belief structures, produced new knowledge, spawned physical protests, and made local oppressive actions visible globally.” 62 Breakdown plays a similar role in Desiriis’ argument, which, with a more sociotechnical focus, revolves around the “margin of indetermination of machines and living beings.” 63 In his argument, botnets and Anonymous itself are seen as sociotechnical amalgamations that raise the question of indetermination. However, it is the breakdown of communication induced by DDoS attacks that represents the inflection point where this negotiation of openness becomes visible.

When confronting these perspectives with the critique developed by Graham and Thrift, 64 it appears that DDoS research, too, is preoccupied with major failures at the expense of mundane acts of maintenance. This is hardly surprising given the

60 Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel, eds., The Promise of Infrastructure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020); Mary Lawhon et al., “Thinking through Heterogeneous Infrastructure Configurations”, Urban Studies 55, no. 4 (2018): 720-32; Kavita Ramakrishnan, Kathleen O’Reilly, and Jessica Budds, “The Temporal Fragility of Infrastructure: Theorizing Decay, Maintenance, and Repair”, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020, doi.org/10.1177/2514848620979712.

61 Sauter, The Coming Swarm, 45.

62 Christian Beck, “Web of Resistance: Deleuzian Digital Space and Hacktivism”, Journal for Cultural Research 20, no. 4 (1 October 2016): 334-49, 346.

63 Deseriis, “Hacktivism”, 148.

64 Graham and Thrift, “Out of Order”.

canonical cases that are discussed in the literature. Historically, the political use of DDoS follows the logic of political campaigning by actively creating temporarily disruptive events that trigger public and media attention – as reflected in the name “Electronic Disturbance Theater.” As an intentionally created communication crisis with a political agenda, it seems that the very essence of DDoS is its exceptionality. However, when looking at the recent technological development of DDoS beyond the canonical examples, the question of exceptionality becomes more complicated. In the following section, the sketch of technical developments provided above will be used as a basis for a more elaborate discussion of the relationship between exceptionality and visibility.

Table of Contents