As the Reuters headline read this week
“Hackers break into server for Obamacare website”

It was about hackers who uploaded malicious code onto a development server, which is part of ObamaCare.
The code installed on the government website was said to be part of a larger operation and used primarily to carry out DDoS attacks on other websites. What’s so important about such a tiny infraction ?
It gives you an idea of why DDoS attacks are getting larger and more sophisticated and more frequent. It would be a safe bet to assume this development machine had plenty of horsepower and a GigE connection
that wasn’t throttled. This is where a lot of DDoS attacks are being perpetrated from especially the large and complex variety. Its not bot infected laptops at home anymore, although they can be troublesome too sometimes.

Its easy to let security slide if it’s a test or development machine that’s just used by programmers and maybe just completely forgotten about when a project ends.

Don’t become part of the problem. Run vulnerability scans to test and find holes where hackers can gain entry. When DOSarrest Internet Security started offering Vulnerability testing last year, they saw almost 9 out of 10 servers had at least one vulnerability and most had multiple holes.