What is a DDoS Attack?
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is an attempt to overload and disrupt the normal functioning of a server, service, or network by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. In this type of attack, the attacker uses a group of devices infected with malware, commonly known as a “botnet” to bombard the target continuously with more requests than it can handle, which causes the server resources to run out and slow down or completely block legitimate users.
How do DDoS Attacks Work?
Now that we’ve explained what is a DDoS attack, let’s dive deeper into what is DDoSing and how these attacks operate as a deeper understanding of these attacks reveals their complexities and the strategies employed by attackers to launch large scale service disruption.
Compromise Multiple Devices: The initial phase of a DDoS attack involves assembling what is known as a botnet. Botnet DDoS is a group of compromised devices. In the majority of cases, attackers contaminate thousands of equipment and take control via malware or vulnerability in a vulnerable machine — with computers, IoT devices, routers, or even security cameras being the typical victims.
Botnet Command and Control: The botnet is under the attacker’s influence from a command-and-control (C&C) server. The attacker makes use of the C&C server to interact and convey instructions to launch an attack.
Flooding Target with Traffic: When the attacker is ready, they command the botnet DDoS to flood one server/network/application with as much traffic as possible. That traffic can be HTTP requests, UDP packets, or some other protocol depending on the kind of DDoS attack launched. The influx of traffic that gets directed at a target overwhelms its resource.
Resource Exhaustion: The quick increase of traffic to consume all the target bandwidth, CPU, and memory until it cannot provide real services anymore. Users will experience problems like slowed response times, errors or an outright denial of access.
Disruption of Services: Users are commonly unable to reach the affected service as long as the DDoS attack continues. It can run for hours, days, and in certain situations for weeks depending on the power of a botnet and determination of an attacker.
Types of DDoS Attacks
Distributed denial of service attack is broadly divided into three categories:
1. Volumetric Attacks
Volumetric DDoS attacks are done with the intention to overwhelm the server with the massive amount of traffic, saturate its bandwidth and prevent the server from responding to legitimate requests. The magnitude of attack is measured in bits per second. This includes flood attacks like UDP, ICMP, HTTP, CharGen. The whole attack is done by sending enough packets in the network which force the server to crash or stop responding.
2. Protocol Attacks
Protocol attacks are executed at Layer 3 or 4 of the OSI model of the network like routers, firewalls, load balancers. This exploits the network by sending excessive packets to overwhelm the network and transport operations. This includes SYN floods, ping of death, DNS amplification, smurf DoS attack. The attack is measured in packets per second.
3. Application Layer Attacks
Targeting specific applications or services (e.g., HTTP floods). Application layer attack is known as Layer 7 attacks and focuses on attacking vulnerabilities of an application. Although it is a slow attack, it may directly attack the web server or CPU with an abundance of internal requests and numerous file loads resultantly cause the application to fail or crash. It includes SQL injection, HTTP flood, slowloris. The attack is measured in requests per second. However these attacks are small in numbers, it can have drastic results as CPU or web servers have low bandwidth and can be impacted with the small attacks.
Impact of DDoS Attacks on Businesses
Understanding what is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is not enough, businesses also need to realize its implications. Some of those impacts are:
- Revenue loss: DDoS attacks can break down the network or business websites which may cause substantial revenue loss. The businesses that wholly operate online (ecommerce, SaaS providers, other online services) may incur loss for every downtime second. Also, it impacts operations, disrupts workflow and delays the projects. This can also be included as a hidden cost from the company.
- Brand reputation damage: As DDoS attacks directly hit the availability of services, lack of services and fear of breach of data may impact the brand reputation of the company and can increase customer attrition. These attacks often act as negative PR and attract unnecessary media attention. The impact can be long-lasting and will require efforts to reinstate the reputation.
- Increased security and recovery costs: A company has to bear hefty costs to reiterate the services and mitigate threats. Specialized security services would also be required to dilute the attack and prevent potential future threats.
- Breach of customer trust: Distributed denial of service attack creates fear mongering within the customers and creates a negative impact on customer’s trust. A company may also lose its loyal customers, and may lead to decreased customer retention.
How to Identify a DDoS Attack
Recognizing what is a DDoS attack in action can prevent extended downtime. One of the biggest indicators of a Distributed denial of service attack is extremely slow network performance. DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) floods the network with malicious traffic to overwhelm the server crippling service for legitimate users. Page loads can take longer, responses might lag, or it could time out when trying to establish a connection.
Another set of signs of a DDoS attack is the unavailability or error of services that are typically accessible. If your site or other service suddenly becomes unreachable or developers get random error messages, this is indicative of a DDoS attack. Server performance monitoring tools can notify you when unusual spikes in traffic occur and will send alerts if there is a considerable, sudden increase in failed requests.
Spikes in traffic from a single IP address or geographic location, especially if they deviate from regular usage patterns, also suggest a possible attack. Being able to identify these red flags at an early stage enables IT teams to respond faster, which means reduced downtime and ensured service continuity.
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Defending Against DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks require a layered protection model to reduce impact and provide active network resilience. Some of the same strategies for defending against DDoS attack:
- Traffic Filtering: Firewalls and network-level IP filtering are some of the most basic types of defenses a firewall might offer. These tools help reduce the impact of an attack by filtering out malicious traffic before it reaches sensitive network components. It is based on detecting anomaly patterns against IP addresses.
- Rate Limiting: It offers a way to limit requests per second going in so that it does not overload. Simple rate limiting will restrict the requests and still lower the risk of service downtime.
- Load Balancing: Load balancing distributes the traffic to multiple servers so that no single server gets overloaded. It distributes the traffic for effective load balancing, and also ensures that service will be available during events of high traffic on website, server, or application.
- DDoS Mitigation Services: Third-party DDoS mitigation services are designed with rich features to detect and filter all potential attacks on the move. Such services will analyze traffic, perform filtering techniques, or even clean up and redirect malicious traffic away from the network so that the effect of the attack is minimal.
Leveraging Fidelis Elevate for DDoS Protection
Fidelis Elevate is a complete threat detection and response platform designed to defend from all forms of cyber threats, including DDoS attacks. Fidelis Elevate provides organizations with advanced threat intelligence, endpoint monitoring and network analytics to discover and stop DDoS attacks.
In terms of DDoS protection…here is how it helps:
Real-Time Network Monitoring: Fidelis Elevate monitors network traffic in real-time, so that outliers can be identified and promptly addressed. The platform delivers red-flag alerts of abnormal spikes or any malevolent traffic flows in advance as it provides real-time visibility into traffic patterns, hence decreasing the time taken to respond.
Automated Threat Detection and Response: Fidelis Elevate effectively detects possible DDoS activities by leveraging AI-driven analytics and automation, as well can initiate automated countermeasures, like traffic filtering and rate limitation. It mitigates the DDoS attack as flooding resources before it reaches end users.
Post Attack Forensic and Investigation: After the DDoS attack, Fidelis Elevate delivers forensic capabilities to enable security teams to follow the trail of an attack. This helps you understand all attack vectors used against your organization as well as assets compromised during a successful attack. This information is crucial for strengthening the defenses and avoiding all these attacks in the future.
Fidelis Elevate provides enterprises with a DDoS attack mitigation solution and an integrated system to strengthen their overall cybersecurity posture.
- Network, Cloud, and Endpoint Security
- 9x Faster Detection and Response
- Full Control of Your Attack Surface
Frequently Ask Questions
What is the difference between DDoS attack vs DoS attack?
A DoS attack typically originates from a single source or system, where the attacker sends an overwhelming volume of requests to the target, causing the service to slow down or crash. These attacks are relatively simpler to execute and, because they stem from one location, can often be blocked by identifying and filtering the attacker’s IP address.
On the other hand, a DDoS attack is significantly harder to execute and powerful, as it employs thousands of compromised devices (also known as “botnet”) finding floods traffic from various locations against the target. This dispersed approach makes it almost impossible to deal with DDoS attacks. Changing IPs, request types, and locations can allow them to bypass traditional security defenses which poses a major problem for network administrators who need their services available at all times while still capable of defending against such attacks.
What is the primary goal of a DDoS attack?
The main purpose of a DDoS attack is to flood a specific server / network with so many requests with high traffic causing it unable to handle and eventually stopping the access for genuine users over the service/application. By exhausting system resources, attackers can create downtime, impact revenue, and damage the reputation of the targeted organization.
What is the most common form of a DDoS attack?
The basic type of DDoS attack is the Volumetric Attack, which sends a flood of data to an entire network, exhausting the bandwidth. This includes techniques such as UDP floods and ICMP floods, which overload the server and disable regular traffic.
How long can DDoS attacks last?
DDoS attacks can vary in duration — lasting anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks, depending on the goal of the attacker and how much resources they have available. However, persistent attacks are often more difficult to mitigate and will last for hours and even days (which can be harmful to businesses when services need restoration).
