Imagine your website, gaming server, and online store being completely inaccessible. No prior warnings, just flooding of overwhelming unnecessary traffic, aimed at obstructing your access to the target servers, causing severe damage. This is the grim reality of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. It alarms the need to stop DDoS attacks.
Advancements in telecommunications connect us with the rest of the world and bridge the widespread distance. Simultaneously, it leaves room for cybercriminals to attack the website for their own benefit. Cybercriminals are hijacking sensitive information through distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), paralyzing businesses, taking down websites, and likewise.
DDoS attacks are becoming frequent and intense. But what exactly is a DDoS attack? How far does it cause damage to your systems?
Key steps for DDoS prevention are discussed in this blog.
What is a DDoS Attack?
DDoS attacks are carried out to crash users’ websites, servers, or networks by flooding them with unnecessary requests. This consumes the system’s capacity and slows down its response time to legitimate requests. Tracing DDoS attacks is difficult as they come from various IP addresses. DDoS attack prevention must be carried out with utmost attention and accuracy by employing all necessary DDoS mitigation methods.
The intention behind a DDoS attack is to disrupt victims’ servers or websites, causing financial losses. This emboldens attackers to carry out more attacks to generate extensive traffic and reputational damage to businesses or individuals.
The most common targets of DDoS include:
- Businesses providing online services
- E-shopping sites
- Online casinos
How Does a DDoS Attack Work?
DDoS attacks are carried out by either using large internet connections or botnet channels. Using such sophisticated channels, malicious attackers proceed with their agenda of hijacking servers.
DoS vs DDoS
DDoS is a subcategory of denial-of-service attacks (DoS). The only difference between DoS and DDoS is that the former uses a single internet connection, and the latter utilizes thousands of devices to flood the system with unnecessary traffic. This sheer volume of DDoS makes it difficult to counter the attack.
Botnets
Botnets are used as a channel to carry out denial-of-service attacks. Firstly, attackers hijack a system and install malicious malware, called a bot. The infected computer forms a network called a botnet. Attackers leverage this botnet and instruct it to overwhelm the victim’s system with unnecessary requests. Through a botnet, fake traffic is generated that compromises the efficiency of the system.
Instances of DDoS Attacks
Some of the most threatening examples of DDoS attacks:
- Estonia was hit hard by DDoS attacks targeting its government, banking, and media websites.
- GitHub, a popular code hosting platform, survived a DDoS attack that lasted several days. Attackers generated massive traffic to overwhelm servers.
- ProtonMail faced a severe DDoS attack shortly after its launch. The attackers demanded a ransom in Bitcoin, but ProtonMail refused to pay.
Common Types of DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks comprise multiple forms. This section gives exposure to various types of DDoS attacks:
1- TCP Flood Attacks
A TCP flood attack is a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack in which an attacker sends a huge volume of TCP connection requests without finishing them to overwhelm the target system. This depletes the target's resources and renders it incapable of processing valid connections. This clogs up the connection queue so that users cannot use the service.
There are various varieties of TCP Flood attacks, including SYN Flood, wherein an intruder floods numerous SYN (synchronous) requests but never answers the SYN-ACK responses of the server, leaving connections half-opened.
2- Volume-Based Attacks
Volumetric-based DDoS attacks involve launching a large number of attacks on a targeted website to overwhelm its resources’ capacity. For instance, unnecessary requests can be sent to servers, and networks can be overwhelmed by generating fake traffic.
In the digital space, DDoS attackers seek to saturate an attacked site’s bandwidth. This attack intensity is measured in bits per second. The most common DDoS attacks include UDP Flooding, NTP Amplification, ICMP Flooding, and DNS Amplification.
3- UDP Flood Attacks
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) flood attack is a specific type of Denial-of-Service attack where attackers overwhelm the target system with a large number of UDP packets, causing the system to slow down.
Attackers also often fake the sender’s IP address, making it difficult to stop DDoS attacks. Since UDP is connectionless, the target system has to process and respond to each packet, using up its resources.
4- Protocol-Based Attacks
Protocol-based attacks target weaknesses in network protocols to drain server resources. SYN Flood bombards a target with multiple TCP SYN requests that never finalize the handshake, wasting the server's memory and CPU. ACK Flood inundates a system with TCP ACK packets, making it handle bogus connections. Smurf Attack misuses ICMP by directing forged ping requests toward a network's broadcast address, and every device will then bomb the target with responses.
5- Application Layer Attacks
These attacks target specific applications rather than the network itself. HTTP Flood bombs a site by sending an overwhelming volume of HTTP GET or POST requests, mimicking real user behavior, and is increasingly hard to block.
Slowloris establishes several concurrent connections to a web server by sending part of an HTTP request, preventing new valid connections from being processed. DNS Query Flood targets DNS servers with a flood of numerous requests, making the domain name resolution impossible for legitimate users.
6- ICMP (Ping) Flood
An ICMP (Ping) Flood is a DoS attack where an attacker hits a target system with an enormous amount of ICMP Echo Request (ping) packets. Each ping is required to be responded to by the target system with an Echo Reply, taking up its network bandwidth and processing resources.
The system can slow down or even crash if many pings reach it simultaneously. Attackers tend to spoof (impostor) their IP addresses, making it more difficult to track the attack. The attack is straightforward but effective if the target has limited resources.
7- Misused Application Attack
A Misused Application Attack is when hackers misuse flaws in legitimate programs to execute malicious functions. Rather than attacking a system directly, they abuse trusted software, services, or protocols for malicious purposes.
Some examples are misusing email servers as email spammers and abusing remote desktop services for unauthorized remote access. To avert such attacks, one needs regular software updates, robust access controls, and monitoring for suspicious behavior.
DDoS Attack Prevention
DDoS attack prevention requires holistic and coherent strategies, from strengthening infrastructure to inspecting traffic. This section delves into explaining the most significant tips for DDoS prevention:
1- Strong Network Infrastructure
Creating a strong network infrastructure is the key to DDoS prevention. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) assists in spreading traffic to several servers worldwide, which minimizes the traffic on your main server. CDNs not only enhance performance but also serve as a buffer for traffic surges due to DDoS attacks.
Further, the use of load balancers ensures that traffic is distributed uniformly across servers to avoid any server from becoming a failure point or a bottleneck. Utilizing geo-blocking or geo-filtering can further reduce exposure by blocking or deflecting traffic from areas with suspected malicious activity.
2- Set Up Firewalls and Routers Correctly
Configuring firewalls and routers correctly can go a long way to stop DDoS attacks. Configuring rate limiting ensures that the number of requests per second from a single IP address is limited, which lessens the effect of request floods.
Access Control Lists (ACLs) can be employed to block traffic from known malicious IPs or even entire suspicious regions. Firewall rules must be kept up to date according to current threats to ensure a robust defense.
3- Continuously Monitor Traffic Patterns
Continuous network monitoring is important for identifying possible DDoS attacks at an early stage. Zabbix, Nagios, Datadog, and Prometheus are tools that monitor traffic in real time and trigger an alert if suspicious traffic patterns or sudden spikes are observed. Quick reaction by your team can help reduce damage. Historical traffic patterns can also assist in DDoS prevention and enhancing overall resilience.
Importance of DDOS Mitigation Techniques
DDoS mitigation is vital for safeguarding websites, applications, and online services against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which serve to overwhelm systems with enormous traffic, resulting in downtime, revenue loss, and reputation damage.
With cyberattacks increasing in magnitude and complexity, efficient DDoS mitigation techniques provide business continuity, protect customer trust, and ensure service availability by identifying and blocking harmful traffic while permitting legitimate users seamless access.
Stages of DDoS Mitigation: Basic Techniques
The four most significant steps for DDoS mitigation techniques are explained below:
1. Detection
The organization needs to be proactive in detecting the DDoS attack. Any deviation in site traffic indicates a DDoS attack. It is better to use an entity behavior analytics solution for detecting abnormal network behavior. Similarly, this tool also detects anomalies in the router, the server, and the endpoint in that network.
2. Response
Once the attack is detected, the organization responds firmly to counter the anomalies. It can be done by absorbing or diverting malicious traffic from the threat’s intended target. Often, the Domain Name System is used to carry out this response. It is effective against attacks on both the application and network OSI layers.
3. Filtering
Filtering means screening out legitimate patterns from malicious traffic. Filtering can easily be performed without disturbing the user experience. For instance, the IT team can highlight which traffic to stop by determining which users are using the affected server.
4. Analysis
Analysis of the attack, along with the organization’s security response, is essential to protect the system against future attacks. To do this, IT analysts need to capture information about the attack via system analytics. Often, information is shared with the cybersecurity community to strengthen the system against illegitimate attacks.
FAQs
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What is a DDoS Attack?
A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is when multiple compromised devices flood a target system, network, or website with excessive traffic, making it slow or completely unavailable.
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How Does a DDoS Attack Work?
Attackers use botnets (a network of infected devices) to send massive amounts of traffic to overwhelm a target’s resources, causing disruption.
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What are the Common Types of DDoS Attacks?
- Volumetric Attacks – Overload bandwidth with high traffic.
- Protocol Attacks – Exploit network protocols like TCP, UDP, or ICMP.
- Application-Layer Attacks – Target specific applications like web servers.
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How Long Does a DDoS Attack Last?
DDoS attacks can last minutes to days, depending on the attack intensity and the attacker’s goal.
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What are the Signs of a DDoS Attack?
- Slow or unresponsive websites
- High server CPU and memory usage
- Unusual traffic spikes from unknown sources
To put it briefly, DDoS attacks are causing enormous damage to organizations, businesses, and financial institutions. Advancements in technology have further sophisticated such attacks. For DDoS attack prevention, organizations must utilize robust RSA encryption, authentication, and authorization-like tools to reduce the risk of cyber attacks. In addition to measures, by using the best ad blockers for Edge, such as DDoS attacks can be prevented.
For example, Websites using SSL/TLS with RSA encryption protect against malicious traffic that could contribute to a DDoS campaign. In addition, all such techniques offer robust and firm firewalls to prevent DDoS attacks.
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