DDoS Attack: What It Is and How To Fight It

Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated over the years that even small, low-profile websites are no longer immune.

In fact, thousands of data breaches are happening every day and almost half targets small businesses. You deserve to know this data so you can be aware of the common threats and protect your business from it. 

Ever heard of Distributed Denial-of-Service or DDoS attack? It’s one of the notorious attacks in cloud computing that continue to plague websites worldwide. Cyber hackers use DDoS methods to make sites inaccessible to their legitimate users. 

Stop DDoS attack from damaging your business. In this post, you’ll know what DDoS is and how you can protect your site from it. 

What is DDoS Attack?

DDoS is a cloud-specific attack that involves flooding a certain IP address with a huge amount of unwanted traffic from multiple sources. The hackers target high-profile sources like news websites, schools, banks, and government agencies. 

The barrage of packets, connection requests, and incoming messages can cause its target’s system to crash. In result, legitimate visitors can no longer access the site. 

Learn the Top Reasons of DDos Attacks

Anyone can launch a DDoS attack – can be bored teenagers, activists or business competitors. These are a few reasons why they do what they do: 

Web vandalism: An assailant attacks by defacing any online content for enjoyment. They’re mostly tech-savvy teenagers or college students who vandalise websites to either show off their skills or exploit any security vulnerabilities they find. 

Hacktivism: An assailant hacks a computer system for political or social purposes. This is a way for hacktivists (online activists) to express their anger or disagreement towards the government, businesses or organisations. Anonymous is a perfect example of a hacktivist group.

Business Competition: DDoS attacks can be a tool for businesses to get rid of rivals. They prevent their competitors from joining massive events (e.g. online sales campaigns) and shut them down for months. 

Extortion: It works the same as any extortion activities in the real world. An extortionist demands money in exchange for not destroying a victim’s website. 

Online game rivalries: Some online gamers use DDoS attacks to assault other gamers’ servers to either interrupt online competitions or avoid imminent defeat.

3 Types of DDoS Attacks You Should Know

1. Volumetric Attack

This type of attack tries to cause congestion by consuming the victim’s network maximum bandwidth. 

2. TCP State-Exhaustive Attack 

This targets firewalls, web servers and load balancers to obstruct connections. The hacker will congest the limited number of simultaneous connections that a device can support. 

3. Application Layer Attack 

Also known as Layer 7 attack, this target weaknesses found in servers or applications. Hackers will intentionally maintain a connection and clog it by manipulating processes and transactions. 

Threats are more difficult to mitigate since it only needs a few machines to launch the attack which generates a low traffic rate that may appear to be authentic. 

Protect Your Website Against DDoS Attack

Recognise early signs of DDoS Attack

Take note of your site’s normal inbound traffic rate. This way, you can instantly determine if there’s any unusual activity on your website. 

Is there are sudden spikes in your traffic, check first if they’re from legitimate visitors or an incoming DDoS attack. It’s best to have a DDoS specialist in your team to monitor your site against possible attacks. 

Create a strategic plan

Having a strategic plan in place is always one of the best steps you can take to prevent any attack. Discuss with your team how to audit and respond when you detect a possible DDoS attack. 

Another important detail to consider is how to communicate with your customers when such issues occur. Make sure to prepare a Business Continuity Plan during and after any attack. 

Increase bandwidth budget

Increasing your bandwidth allocation will help your server adjust to the unexpected rise in traffic. While this may not stop DDoS attacks per se, it will give you ample time to respond before it depletes all your resources.

READ: Get an Estimate: How Much Hosting Bandwidth Do You Need?

Contact your hosting provider

If you don’t host your own servers, seek professional help from your hosting provider. But in most cases, they can detect it before you can. Still, you should work closely with them to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.

Contact a DDos specialist 

For attacks that are way beyond your control, you need to call a DDoS specialist. These organisations use sophisticated infrastructure and technologies like data scrubbing. You can call them directly or your hosting provider may also partner with them to treat such attacks.

Equip yourself against DDoS 

Get one step ahead when it comes to choosing the tools and resources you need to fight any form of cyberattack, like DDoS. 

Get a hosting service that offers advanced security to detect malicious activities and cyber threats before happen.