DDoS assaults are among the most common and significant threats to websites. A DDoS assault is a malicious attempt to overwhelm a website with traffic, causing it to slow down or become unavailable to genuine users. DDoS assaults can have a substantial impact on your website’s reputation, performance, and income.
Key Takeaways:
- DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to overwhelm a website with a large amount of traffic, making it slow or unavailable for legitimate users.
- DDoS attacks can target different layers of the network and application, and have various motives and objectives, such as extortion, competition, activism, or vandalism.
- DDoS attacks can have serious consequences for your website, such as downtime, performance degradation, reputation damage, resource consumption, and data breach.
- You can protect your website from DDoS attacks by using a content delivery network (CDN), signing up for a dedicated DDoS protection service, implementing a web application firewall (WAF), hardening your web server and application, and monitoring and testing your website regularly.
According to an AWS analysis, DDoS attacks climbed by 39% in the first half of 2019 compared to 2018, with their severity also increasing considerably. DDoS attacks affect all websites, regardless of size or popularity. As a result, having a strong DDoS security strategy in place is critical for preventing or reducing the impact of such attacks.
In this article, we will see what DDoS attacks are, how they work, and what are the best practices to protect your website from them.
What are DDoS attacks and how do they work?
A DDoS attack is a type of denial-of-service (DoS) attack, which aims to disrupt the normal functioning of a website or service by exhausting its resources. A DoS attack can be launched from a single source, such as a compromised computer or a botnet, which is a network of infected devices controlled by a hacker.
A DDoS attack, on the other hand, is a distributed denial-of-service attack, which means that it involves multiple sources that simultaneously send a large number of requests or packets to the target website. This creates a traffic congestion that overwhelms the website’s server, network, or application, preventing it from responding to legitimate requests.
DDoS attacks can target different layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, which is a framework that defines how data is transmitted over a network. The OSI model consists of seven layers: physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, and application.
DDoS attacks can be classified into two main categories: infrastructure layer attacks and application layer attacks.
Infrastructure layer attacks target the network and transport layers of the OSI model, such as layer 3 and layer 4. These attacks aim to consume the bandwidth or the processing power of the website’s server or network. Some common examples of infrastructure layer attacks are SYN floods, UDP floods, and ICMP floods.
Application layer attacks target the presentation and application layers of the OSI model, such as layer 6 and layer 7. These attacks aim to exploit the logic or functionality of the website’s application, such as a web server, a database, or an API. Some common examples of application layer attacks are HTTP floods, SQL injection, and WordPress pingback attacks.
DDoS attacks can have various motives and objectives, such as:
- Extortion: The attacker demands a ransom from the website owner to stop the attack or to prevent future attacks.
- Competition: The attacker tries to gain an advantage over a rival website by disrupting its service or reputation.
- Activism: The attacker tries to express a political or social message by targeting a website that represents an opposing view or cause.
- Vandalism: The attacker tries to cause chaos or damage for fun or personal satisfaction.
DDoS attacks can have serious consequences for your website, such as:
- Downtime: Your website becomes inaccessible or unusable for your visitors, resulting in lost traffic, conversions, and revenue.
- Performance degradation: Your website becomes slow or unstable, affecting the user experience and satisfaction.
- Reputation damage: Your website loses its credibility and trustworthiness, affecting your brand image and customer loyalty.
- Resource consumption: Your website consumes more resources, such as bandwidth, CPU, and memory, increasing your operational costs and reducing your efficiency.
- Data breach: Your website becomes vulnerable to other attacks, such as malware infection, data theft, or defacement.
How to protect your website from DDoS attacks?
There is no foolproof way to prevent DDoS attacks, but there are some best practices that can help you reduce the risk and the impact of such attacks. Here are some of the most effective methods to protect your website from DDoS attacks:
Use a content delivery network (CDN)
A CDN is a service that distributes your website’s content across multiple servers around the world, creating a network of proxy servers that act as a buffer between your website and your visitors. A CDN can help you protect your website from DDoS attacks by:
- Caching your website’s static content, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript, reducing the load on your origin server and improving your website’s performance.
- Filtering and blocking malicious traffic, such as bots, crawlers, and attackers, before it reaches your website, using various techniques, such as rate limiting, IP reputation, and geo-blocking.
- Absorbing and distributing the traffic spikes, using its large network capacity and scalability, preventing your website from being overwhelmed by a sudden surge of requests.
There are many CDN providers available, such as Cloudflare, Akamai, and AWS CloudFront, that offer different features and pricing plans. You can choose the one that best suits your website’s needs and budget.
Sign up for a dedicated DDoS protection service
A dedicated DDoS protection service is a service that specializes in detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks, using advanced technologies and techniques. A dedicated DDoS protection service can help you protect your website from DDoS attacks by:
- Monitoring and analyzing your website’s traffic, using artificial intelligence and machine learning, to identify and respond to DDoS attacks in real time.
- Diverting and scrubbing the malicious traffic, using a technique called BGP routing, to a remote network where it is filtered and cleaned before being sent back to your website.
- Providing you with reports and alerts, using a dashboard or an API, to keep you informed and updated about the status and the details of the DDoS attacks.
There are many dedicated DDoS protection services available, such as AWS Shield, Cloudflare Spectrum, and Imperva Incapsula, that offer different levels and types of protection and pricing plans. You can choose the one that best suits your website’s needs and budget.
Implement web application firewall (WAF)
A WAF is a software or hardware device that sits between your website and the internet, inspecting and filtering the incoming and outgoing traffic, based on a set of rules and policies. A WAF can help you protect your website from DDoS attacks by:
- Blocking or allowing traffic, based on the source, destination, protocol, method, or content of the requests, using a technique called whitelisting or blacklisting.
- Detecting and preventing common web application attacks, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery, using a technique called signature-based detection.
- Learning and adapting to the normal behavior and patterns of your website’s traffic, using a technique called anomaly-based detection.
There are many WAF providers available, such as Sucuri, Wordfence, and SiteLock, that offer different features and pricing plans. You can choose the one that best suits your website’s needs and budget.
Harden your web server and application
Hardening your web server and application means applying security measures and best practices to make them more resilient and less vulnerable to DDoS attacks. Some of the steps you can take to harden your web server and application are:
- Update your web server and application software regularly, to fix any security vulnerabilities and bugs that could be exploited by attackers.
- Configure your web server and application settings properly, to limit the number of concurrent connections, requests, and timeouts, to prevent resource exhaustion and denial of service.
- Use secure protocols and encryption, such as HTTPS, SSL, and TLS, to protect your website’s data and communication from interception and manipulation.
- Implement authentication and authorization, such as passwords, tokens, and captchas, to restrict access to your website’s sensitive and critical functions and resources.
Monitor and test your website regularly
Monitoring and testing your website regularly means keeping track of your website’s performance, availability, and security, using various tools and methods. Monitoring and testing your website regularly can help you protect your website from DDoS attacks by:
- Measuring and analyzing your website’s metrics, such as traffic volume, response time, error rate, and resource utilization, to identify and resolve any issues or anomalies that could indicate a DDoS attack.
- Simulating and evaluating your website’s behavior and capacity, under different scenarios and conditions, such as normal, peak, and stress, to determine and improve your website’s resilience and scalability.
- Scanning and auditing your website’s code and configuration, for any vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that could expose your website to DDoS attacks or other threats.
There are many tools and services available, such as Google Analytics, Pingdom, and LoadImpact, that can help you monitor and test your website regularly. You can choose the one that best suits your website’s needs and budget.
DDoS attacks are a serious threat to your website’s security and performance. They can cause your website to go down, lose revenue, and damage your reputation. Therefore, it is important to have a DDoS protection strategy in place to prevent or mitigate the impact of such attacks.
In this article, we have discussed what DDoS attacks are, how they work, and what are the best practices to protect your website from them. We have suggested five methods to protect your website from DDoS attacks:
- Use a content delivery network (CDN)
- Sign up for a dedicated DDoS protection service
- Implement web application firewall (WAF)
- Harden your web server and application
- Monitor and test your website regularly
By following these methods, you can make your website more secure and fast in loading.