DDoS Attack

Publication date: 12 Jul 2024

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attack on a Web site or online service in which attackers send a large number of requests to the server to reboot it, making the site inaccessible to normal users. The purpose is to cause damage to a business or simply to disrupt the operation of a resource.

Examples of the biggest DDoS attacks:

1. Mirai Botnet Attack (2016). In this attack, attackers used the Mirai botnet to attack major ISPs and services such as Dyn, causing popular sites such as Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, and others to become inaccessible.
2. GitHub Attack (2018). This attack used a method to amplify UDP traffic using DNS amplification, causing severe availability issues for the GitHub development platform.
3. AWS Shield Attack (2020). This attack on Amazon Web Services (AWS) used a DDOS attack that attempted to overload the AWS network, causing availability issues for many online services running on the platform.
4. Spamhaus Attack (2013). This attack used reflected attacks to overload the infrastructure of Spamhaus, an anti-spam and junk mail company.

These examples demonstrate the diverse methods and targets of DDoS attacks, as well as their potential impact on major online services and ISPs.

There are several ways to defend against a DDoS attack:

1. Use specialized services to protect against DDoS attacks. These services can filter traffic and block malicious requests before they reach your server.
2. Set up a firewall to filter traffic and block suspicious IP addresses.
3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which can distribute traffic to multiple servers and reduce the load on the main server.
4. Scaling the server infrastructure to handle large volumes of requests.
5. Performing security testing and analyzing system vulnerabilities to identify and eliminate potential entry points for a DDoS attack.

It is important to take measures to protect against DDoS attacks in advance to minimize possible consequences and ensure stable operation of your web resource.