Black Lives Matter website hit with more than 100 DDoS attacks this year

A prominent Black Lives Matter website came under siege from more than 100 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks this year, according to a report published Wednesday by Deflect Labs.

DDoS attacks flood their target websites with junk traffic that makes it near impossible for regular users of the web to access that same site. The Black Lives Matter website faced an array of these types of assaults, some directed by seemingly technically proficient attackers, others from a digital mob that only jumped into the fray after they noticed someone was already lobbing bad traffic at the site.

Sometimes the attacks generated only a few thousand junk connections. Other times, the attacks generated tens of millions of bad connections. That included a May assault that Deflect said was the largest DDoS attack recorded until a series of Mirai botnet attacks popped up later this year.

"The biggest attacks presented in this report did not require expensive infrastructure, they were simply reflected from other websites to magnify their strength," the report said.

Twitter accounts @_s1ege and @bannedoffline, whom Deflect said "could very well be the same person," accounted for around 20 percent of the attacks. The @_s1ege account launched attacks as part of a more coordinated assault branded #OPAllLivesMatter, which references the "All Lives Matter" counter-protests that have popped up against Black Lives Matter movement.

It's hard to shout-down a protest out in the street. But, as the report concludes, "silencing online voices is becoming ever easier and cheaper on the internet."