Have you ever visited your favorite website only to find it unresponsive? It might be under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This common cyber threat can disrupt your online presence, yet it often goes unnoticed in the media due to the efforts of DDoS protection services like Vercara. If you manage a website, API, or email servers, or need your services available 24/7, understanding DDoS attacks and DDoS protection is crucial. This article will explain DDoS attacks for business owners, offering insights into how they work, real-world examples, and effective preventive measures to protect your business against these threats.
What is a DDoS Attack?
A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a cyber threat that aims to disrupt the availability of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming it with excessive internet traffic. These cyberattacks can severely impact websites and online services, leading to significant downtime and making them inaccessible to users.
The main objective of a DDoS attack is to deplete the target’s resources, such as bandwidth, memory, or processing power, so that it cannot serve legitimate users. Attackers accomplish this by deploying a botnet—a network of compromised devices like computers, smartphones, and IoT devices. These devices, often controlled without the owners’ knowledge, send vast amounts of fake traffic to the target. This overwhelming volume of traffic can slow down, crash, or even completely shut down the server.
DDoS attacks are typically launched by individuals or groups with malicious intent. The motivations behind these cyberattacks vary; some attackers aim to disrupt a competitor, extort money, or cause chaos for personal satisfaction. In some cases, DDoS attacks are politically motivated or used as a form of protest against certain organizations.
How does a DDoS Attack happen?
For a DDoS attack to occur, cybercriminals first need to build a botnet. This is a network of compromised computers or devices that the attackers control remotely. These devices can include anything connected to the internet, such as computers, smartphones, or even smart home devices like cameras and thermostats.
Cybercriminals use various tactics to infect devices with malware, turning them into bots. This can happen through malicious email attachments, software vulnerabilities, or phishing attacks that trick users into downloading harmful software. Once a device is infected, it becomes part of the botnet, ready to launch a DDoS attack at the command of the attacker.
During a DDoS attack, the botnet sends a massive flood of fake traffic to the target server. This traffic overwhelms the server’s resources, causing it to slow down or become unresponsive. The sheer volume of traffic makes it difficult for the server to distinguish between legitimate users and malicious requests, resulting in a denial of service to all users.
There are several techniques used in a DDoS attack, including the following:
- Direct-Path Attack: In a direct-path attack, the botnet sends requests directly to the target server, overwhelming it with sheer volume. These attacks are typically high in volume but involve straightforward tactics, attempting to exhaust network bandwidth and server resources quickly. Due to their simplicity, defense against direct-path attacks can be easier with strategies like rate limiting and IP filtering.
- Amplification Attack: Amplification attacks exploit vulnerable systems to amplify the amount of data sent to the target. The attacker sends a small request to an intermediate server, which then responds with a much larger amount of data to the target. Common vectors include DNS and NTP servers that can be manipulated to generate significant traffic. Amplification attacks can be devastating due to the minimal effort required to launch them compared to the damage caused.
- Protocol Attack: Protocol attacks, also known as state-exhaustion attacks, target weaknesses in the layers of communication protocols. By consuming server or network resources, they disrupt legitimate traffic. Common types include SYN floods, where the handshake processes in TCP communication are exploited to tie up resources on the server, preventing new connections from being established. Defensive measures often include using firewalls and load balancers to identify and block malicious traffic.
- Application-Layer Attack: These attacks target the application layer of the OSI model. Unlike other DDoS attacks that focus on bandwidth, application-layer attacks aim to consume application resources, making them challenging to detect and mitigate. Examples include HTTP GET/POST floods, which can mimic legitimate traffic, overwhelming the target’s application and causing service disruptions.
- DNS Water Torture Attack: This attack involves an adversary continuously sending a high volume of DNS requests with random subdomains to the target’s DNS server. As the server struggles to resolve these numerous and varied requests, it can become overwhelmed, potentially leading to degraded performance or complete service outage. This type of attack not only affects the DNS server by exhausting its resources but can also burden upstream DNS infrastructure, spreading the impact broader than the initial targets. Counteracting DNS Water Torture attacks often involves implementing rate limiting for requests and using advanced DNS configurations to manage and mitigate the unexpected increase in traffic efficiently.
- Carpet Bombing Attack: Carpet bombing is a technique that differs from traditional DDoS attacks by targeting multiple IP addresses within a network rather than focusing on a single server or service. This approach spreads the attack across a wider range, making it difficult to pinpoint and mitigate. By saturating network segments with a distributed volume of malicious traffic, carpet bombing can overwhelm routing and switching infrastructure rather than just endpoint devices. Defensive strategies often involve network-wide monitoring and the deployment of distributed defense mechanisms that can identify and neutralize the spread of malicious traffic across a network spectrum.
Examples of notable DDoS Attacks
One of the most infamous DDoS attacks took place in October 2016, targeting a major Domain Name System (DNS) provider. This attack significantly disrupted internet access to many popular websites for several hours. The attack was executed using the Mirai botnet, which was a network of thousands of compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as webcams and routers. These devices were infected with malware that allowed cybercriminals to control them remotely, turning them into a powerful tool to flood DNS servers with traffic, overwhelming their capacity and causing widespread outages across the internet. This incident highlighted the vulnerabilities in IoT devices and the potential for large-scale disruptions they could cause if they were not properly secured.
In 2020, a national Stock Exchange became the victim of a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which severely impacted its ability to function normally. These malicious attacks targeted the exchange’s network infrastructure, overwhelming it with traffic and rendering it incapable of processing trades. As a result, the exchange was forced to halt trading activities for several days, leading to significant operational disruptions. This pause not only affected the business transactions but also shook investor confidence, as many stakeholders became concerned about the exchange’s ability to protect itself against cyber threats. The incident highlighted the vulnerabilities in the financial sector’s cybersecurity measures and underscored the need for robust defenses against increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.
Another notable incident involved a popular code hosting platform, which experienced a massive DDoS attack in February 2018. The attack reached a peak traffic volume of 1.35 terabits per second, making it one of the largest recorded DDoS attacks at the time. The targeted organization managed to mitigate the attack within minutes, thanks to its robust DDoS protection measures.
In September 2017, a major news publication fell victim to a sprawling DDoS attack that aimed to suppress its critical coverage of a political event. The attackers launched a sophisticated, multi-vector assault that overwhelmed the publication’s online platforms, rendering them inaccessible to readers across the globe for several hours. This incident highlighted vulnerabilities within the media sector and emphasized the need for advanced cybersecurity measures to protect freedom of speech.
More recently, in March 2021, a prominent financial services company faced an onslaught of DDoS attacks targeting its online banking platform. These attacks were particularly devastating as they coincided with a peak period for online transactions, resulting in significant delays and service disruptions for customers. The attackers utilized a newly identified botnet, leveraging insecure internet-connected devices to generate traffic that was difficult to trace or counteract. The company responded by deploying enhanced security protocols and collaborating with external cybersecurity firms to strengthen their defenses.
These examples highlight the potential impact of DDoS attacks on businesses and the importance of being prepared to defend against them.
How DDoS Attacks impact your business
A successful DDoS attack can have severe consequences for businesses, both financially and reputationally. During a DDoS attack, businesses can experience immediate downtime or significant service degradation, which has direct adverse effects on revenue and customer experience. When a service becomes unavailable, users cannot access essential resources, leading to lost sales opportunities and clients seeking alternatives. The inability to maintain a seamless online presence during an attack can tarnish a company’s reputation, as customers may question its reliability and commitment to service quality. The longer the downtime persists, the more substantial the impact on customer trust and business continuity.
Investing in DDoS protection involves both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include the purchase of security technologies, subscription to cloud-based protection services, and potential hiring of cybersecurity experts to implement and monitor these defenses. Indirect costs, while less apparent, can encompass the time and resources spent on training staff, developing incident response plans, and the potential productivity loss during the integration of new security measures. Although the initial investment in DDoS protection can be substantial, it is often justified by the long-term savings incurred from mitigating harmful attacks and safeguarding the business’s reputation and financial health.
DDoS attacks are often used to pressure targets into reducing their defenses, such as Web Application Firewalls, or to exhaust Security Operations Center staff. This can increase the likelihood of attackers succeeding in other malicious activities, such as data breaches or ransomware attacks. While businesses concentrate on mitigating the DDoS attack, cybercriminals may exploit vulnerabilities to conduct additional attacks, thereby increasing the damage.
Preventing DDoS Attacks
For most organizations, it is impossible to prevent DDoS attacks because they are attacker-controlled. The focus should be on mitigating their impact and keeping your business operating. There are several steps that businesses can take to ensure the availability of their online presence, including the following:
Protect all Applications and Networks
One of the fundamental steps in protecting against DDoS attacks is having a comprehensive understanding of your digital assets. You can only defend what you know exists, so it is essential to ensure that every application, service, and network block within your infrastructure has a mitigation solution in place. This task becomes more challenging with the increasing use of cloud services, as resources are often spread across multiple platforms and can be dynamically scaled. Consequently, maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all resources and continuously assessing their vulnerability to DDoS attacks and the mitigation technologies that protect them is crucial.
Using a Mitigation Provider
Partnering with a mitigation provider can be a prudent step for organizations seeking to strengthen their defenses against DDoS attacks. These providers offer specialized tools and expertise that are specifically designed to detect, analyze, and mitigate such threats. By leveraging their services, businesses can benefit from real-time monitoring and rapid response capabilities, which are crucial for minimizing disruptions. Mitigation providers often have access to extensive infrastructure, allowing them to manage and disperse malicious traffic effectively. This partnership not only aids in maintaining service availability but also frees up internal resources, enabling organizations to focus on core business activities while having the reassurance of robust security measures in place.
Monitor your Applications and Networks
Continuous Monitoring: Daily, around-the-clock monitoring of your networks and applications is essential for identifying potential threats before they escalate into full-fledged DDoS attacks. Utilizing automated monitoring tools can provide real-time visibility into traffic patterns, helping to detect anomalies and unusual spikes in data flow. This proactive approach enables swift action, such as rerouting traffic or implementing filtering, to prevent disruptions. Additionally, by conducting regular audits of system logs and performance metrics, organizations can refine their defense strategies and ensure that their readiness against DDoS threats remains high.
Testing Your Mitigation Capabilities
To ensure your mitigation strategies are effective, it is critical to regularly test your system’s capabilities. Begin by conducting simulated cyberattacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) drills, to evaluate your network’s resilience and identify areas for improvement. These exercises help verify the response time of your infrastructure, your ability to divert traffic to mitigation, and the effectiveness of your current security measures. Additionally, include stress testing as part of your routine maintenance to assess how your systems manage heavy loads or elevated levels of malicious traffic. Regularly revisiting and refining your mitigation plans based on these tests helps maintain a proactive defense posture. Remember, continuous improvement is key to staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.
Some organizations, such as Internet Service Providers, Telecommunications Carriers, Cloud Providers, and Webserver Hosting Companies, are in a place to prevent DDoS traffic that is coming from their network with some of the following controls:
Implementing BCP38
ngress filtering is a critical step in preventing DDoS attacks, especially those that exploit IP address spoofing. BCP38, or Best Current Practice 38, involves configuring network routers to verify the source IP addresses of incoming packets. This ensures that traffic with spoofed addresses is blocked, reducing the ability of attackers to launch reflection-based DDoS attacks. To effectively implement BCP38, organizations should ensure that their network infrastructure is set to discard packets that do not match the expected source addresses. This practice requires cooperation across Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and network operators to ensure that filtering is effective on a large scale. While not a standalone solution, integrating BCP38 into a comprehensive security strategy significantly enhances network resilience against certain types of DDoS threats.
Setting up Blackholing
Blackholing is another strategy that ISPs can employ to combat DDoS attacks. This approach involves routing malicious traffic to a “black hole,” effectively dropping it before it reaches its intended destination. ISPs can assist with blackholing by setting up static routes for reserved internal IP addresses such as 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8 and send them to the NULL interface on the router, effectively discarding that traffic.
Use Shadowserver Network Scans
Shadowserver performs scans of network blocks to help identify machines that could be exploited in attacks, such as amplification attacks. By analyzing open services and vulnerable configurations, Shadowserver provides actionable insights that network operators can use to enhance their security posture. These scans are vital for preemptively addressing potential weaknesses before they are leveraged in actual attacks. By participating in Shadowserver’s scan reports, organizations gain valuable visibility into the security status of their infrastructure, enabling them to take corrective actions that avert threats before they escalate into significant incidents.
Restrict Servers on Home Broadband
Prohibiting the operation of servers on home broadband connections is a crucial preventive measure against potential security risks. Home networks typically lack the robust security features and dedicated support that commercial-grade networks possess, making them more vulnerable to exploitation. By restricting servers on these connections, ISPs can help mitigate the risk of home networks being compromised and used to launch attacks or host malicious content. This policy not only safeguards individual users but also enhances the overall security of the broader internet ecosystem. It encourages users to utilize professional hosting services that offer enhanced security measures, ensuring safer and more reliable server operations.
Secure Your CPE
Securing Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) is essential in protecting from IoT botnets such as Mirai and its many variants. This means securing the management and operating system login and to set proper Access Control Lists to only allow your Network Operations Center to control these devices.
Still relevant after all these years
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are incredibly common and continue to increase both in the number of attacks but also the size that they can reach. Understanding how these attacks work and your options for protection is crucial for safeguarding your online services. By implementing mitigation solutions for every application, service, and network block and by having a comprehensive strategy with gating criteria, businesses can protect themselves from the damaging effects of DDoS attacks.
How Vercara can help
Vercara’s UltraDDoS Protect is a robust DDoS protection service that utilizes advanced mitigation techniques to defend against all types of DDoS attacks. Our team of dedicated experts can help you design and implement a tailored solution for your business, ensuring maximum protection without impacting legitimate traffic. We also offer 24/7 monitoring and support, keeping you informed about any potential threats and helping you mitigate them in real-time.
Vercara’s UltraWAF is a Web Application Firewall designed to work seamlessly with UltraDDoS Protect. It effectively detects and blocks application-layer DDoS attacks and other web threats like SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting.
Vercara’s UltraAPI is a specialized suite designed to protect Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). One key component, UltraAPI Bot Manager, is positioned in front of APIs and websites to shield them from API and automated bot attacks.
Vercara’s UltraDNS is a robust and authoritative DNS managed service designed to withstand and be resilient to DDoS attacks, ensuring uninterrupted service. It offers high availability and reliability, crucial for maintaining seamless online operations. Additionally, UltraDNS is fortified by UltraDDoS Protect, which provides an extra layer of defense against potential threats, safeguarding your infrastructure from diverse types of malicious attempts to disrupt service.
For personalized assistance and expert guidance on safeguarding your digital assets, feel free to contact our DDoS mitigation specialists. Our team is ready to discuss your specific needs and craft a robust security strategy tailored to your organization’s requirements. Reach out today to explore how Vercara’s services can enhance your security posture.
