These attacks flood the entire website with traffic to shut it down and stop it from working normally. A similar type is called application-layer attacks, which target the application layer of a website or network.

These attacks direct traffic to specific parts of a website or a hosted application.

These focus on network infrastructure equipment like firewalls, load balancers, and application servers. They exploit weaknesses in the communication protocols used by these devices.

Both types of attacks use a large, unexpected increase in traffic to overwhelm the website’s bandwidth and server capacity.

The goal is to either completely shut down the website or disable specific functions.

Attackers often use botnets (networks of infected computers) to send massive amounts of traffic to a target. Sometimes, a single computer is used for these attacks, known as a DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack.

Launching a DDoS attack can result in criminal charges, fines, and even imprisonment. Laws vary by country, but many have strict penalties for cybercrimes.

DDoS attacks can cause significant financial damage. Businesses may lose revenue due to downtime, incur costs for mitigation and recovery, and face potential fines or legal fees.

A successful DDoS attack can harm a company’s reputation. Customers may lose trust in the business’s ability to protect their data and provide reliable services.

These attacks can disrupt business operations, leading to delays, lost productivity, and a negative impact on customer service.

Implement Strong Security Measures: Use firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security tools to protect against attacks.

Monitor Network Traffic: Regularly check for unusual traffic patterns that might indicate an attack.

Use Specialized Services: Employ services and technologies designed to detect and block harmful traffic, such as DDoS protection services.

Have a Response Plan: Develop and regularly update a plan to respond to DDoS attacks, including steps for mitigation and recovery.

Asymmetric traffic attacks: These send a lot of fake requests to a website, using up server resources.

Targeted traffic attacks: These increase the load on an application, causing it to fail.

Multi-level attacks: These target both the website and the application at the same time until both crash.

Distributed attacks: Hackers use multiple IP addresses to generate fake traffic, making it hard to find the source.

Large amounts of traffic from one IP address or a range of IP addresses.

Unusual traffic from the same type of device, browser version, or location.

A spike in requests to a specific page or endpoint.

A significant increase in traffic during an unusual time of day.

Suspicious traffic patterns, like spikes every 5 or 10 minutes.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) can stop application (layer 7) DDoS attacks by checking all requests from the internet to the network server. It acts as a reverse proxy, blocking harmful traffic before it reaches the server. WAFs use rules to filter requests and can quickly implement custom rules during an attack to stop it.

Network administrators can use blackhole routing to manage web traffic during an attack. This method sends all traffic, both good and bad, to a ‘dead end’ and drops it from the network. While not a permanent solution, it helps maintain some control during an ongoing attack.

Rate limiting restricts the number of requests a server can handle over a certain period. This method is useful for preventing brute force attacks and web scraping. For DDoS attacks, rate limiting should work alongside other strategies to be effective. It needs an algorithm to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent traffic.

An Anycast network spreads malicious traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single server from being overwhelmed. This method distributes traffic across a wide network, managing large volumes of requests without causing downtime. However, its effectiveness depends on the network’s size and the attack’s scale.

Modern operational frameworks like GitOps can help future-proof your business against evolving threats like DDoS attacks. GitOps uses Git for version control, centralizing source code, and infrastructure configurations. This approach enables automated deployments and monitoring, providing a clear audit trail and quick recovery from system issues.

Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or load balancer is a common way to secure a website. A good web hosting service will offer guidance on setting this up. CDNs and firewalls help control internet traffic to your site. It’s best to use multiple strategies for optimal safety, as each method has its pros and cons.