A cyber attack known as a distributed denial of service or DDoS took out several website-based companies last Friday. Users of Twitter, Netflix and the Birmingham News’ AL.com were denied access to these sites for several hours. A company called Dyn was the target and the weapon was something called a “botnet,” malware designed to flood a server with traffic until it collapses. The irony is this happened in the middle of National Cyber Security month. Nick Patterson, from the weekly newspaper Weld, looks at how this attack affects you and what you can do to prevent being a victim of this in the future.