The primary objective of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is to disrupt the availability of systems and data. DDoS attacks overwhelm the targeted system with a flood of traffic, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. This disruption of availability can cause significant operational and financial damage to organizations.
References:
* NIST SP 800-61- Computer Security Incident Handling Guide, which outlines the nature of DDoS attacks and their impact on system availability.
* ISO/IEC 27002:2013- Provides best practices for information security management, including measures to protect against DDoS attacks.