You see im doing an essay about this article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18786815)
and i have to basically review it. i read it and i don't know what to do, it would be a big help if someone would help me.
but first can some one explain what is DDos and how it affects people

Basically a DDoS attack is when a bunch of people intentionally access a website or other online service all at the same time. The goal of doing this is to overload the capabilities of the server, eventually shutting it down.

To quote Futurama: "It's like putting too much air in a balloon!"
http://theinfosphere.org/Where_No_Fan_Has_Gone_Before

When a popular online service is brought down, it can affect any number of things in several ways, and it depends on the service that was attacked.

That's an attack in which serveral computers overwhelm a server with mails, connection requests, or data, or almost anything that could disturb the target.

>>2 But they don't usually do it intentionnaly. Hackers can infect computers and servers (the more broadband, the better), to lead their attack: you won't knock Amazon out with just your 3 home computers). (See previous link)

The problem is that this kind of attack is really easy to perform. In 2009, advocates of The Pirate Bay organised an attack againt the IFPI website, for exemple.

Script kiddies are also a threat, since they perform attacks just for fun or to show capabilities they don't have, but without knowing what they are doing.

These sites show interresting graphs of surges in data traffic during an attack :

http://thehackernews.com/2014/02/NTP-Distributed-Denial-of-Service-DDoS-attack.html
https://asert.arbornetworks.com/attac-severs-myanmar-internet/

A DDoS attack is when a group of people send information packets to a website or server in an attempt to overload it and cause it to shut down temporarily.

Basically the attacks run sites into the ground at an incredible pace but the article you have seems to be referring to both phones being used as tools to run a DDos and/or things being downloaded as 'sleeper code' to be activated later and used to send packages.

be sure to mention LOIC!