https://www.incapsula.com/ddos/ddos-attacks/
How could these common types of DDOS attacks be “translated” to be used against the SAFE Network? For example, lots of computers (like a large botnet) doing distributed requests to the network for non-existing chunks of data?
Recommend you start here: https://safenetwork.wiki/en/FAQ#Attacks_on_the_SAFE_Network
This could be done. But I think there’s a protection for that. All these bots won’t be in the same group to start with. So you have a big number of nodes spread all over the network. And when you try to store a new file, your Client will always ask if it’s stored already. So a request for a Chunk that’s not there is possible and part of the normal network. But when you starts to flood the network with these requests I’ll guess your close group will de-reank you or just kick you out.
This was actually discussed in a very recent thread. Here’s the relevant bit from @dirvine.