But while ways to mitigate and perhaps prevent attacks have emerged over the decade, so too have new attack vectors. As new methods to thwart attacks are discovered, attackers discover new way to attack.

"Nowadays the consumers have a lot more bandwidth and it's easier than ever to set up your own botnet by infecting users with malware and alike," writes Jonas Frey of Probe Networks.

"I do not see a real solution to this problem right now," Frey writes. "There's not much you can do about the unwillingness of users to keep their software/OS up to date and deploy anti-virus/anti-malware software (and keep it up to date). Some approaches have been made, like cutting off Internet access for users which have been identified by ISPs for being a member of some botnet being infected. This might be the only long-term solution to this probably. There is just no patch for human stupidity."

Arbor's Dobbins begs to differ:

"The tolls and the techniques, the technologies and best practices - this information is out there, it's available. Folks need to learn about this stuff because, if they do the searches and do some reading they can empower themselves to defend themselves and their networks, and their customers, from DDoS attack. It isn't rocket science; it does require some skill set, some dedication and some hard work, but it can be done. And it's done successfully by organizations around the world everyday. These are the organizations you don't tend to read about in the press."