Given there are various kinds of cyber-attacks that could render systems across the world, to be a slave at the hands of the attackers, who could harbor malevolent intentions towards their victim. This could lead to a crippling effect on an organization or worst, even a nation. Hence, we look forward to educating the masses about DDoS (Distributed Denial of Services) attack.
What is a DDoS attack?
A DDoS attack aims at bringing down the services of an organization or website, by bombarding it with so much traffic that their services and infrastructure are unable to handle it. In this kind of attack, multiple compromised systems are used to target the server with huge volume of traffic.
This is usually caused by a botnet formed by a number of compromised systems. The various kinds of DDoS attacks include volume-based attacks protocol attacks and application-layer attacks.
Types of DDoS attacks
Volume-based attacks – This attack includes UDP floods(User Datagram Protocol), ICMP(Internet Control Message Protocol) floods, and other spoofed packet floods. This kind of attack is measured in bits/second (bps).
Protocol Attacks – This kind of attack is measured in packets per second (PPS) and it includes SYN floods (half-open attack), fragmented packets attack, ping of death, smurf DDos and more.
Application layer attacks – This kind of attack is measured in Request Per Second (RPS) and it includes, low-and-slow-attacks, GET/POST floods and more.
Examples of a DDoS attack –
September 2019 – Carpet Bombing DDoS attack
South Africa’s largest internet service provider, Cool Ideas, was targeted and its services were brought down for an entire day due to a massive Carpet Bombing DDoS attack.
July 2019 – Telegram DDoS attack
A massive DDoS attack was launched against Telegram Messenger that caused service outages along with connection problems among the apps North and South America based users. Along with America, some European countries also faced the attack.
DDoS attack against Wikipedia
A large scale attack was launched against Wikipedia taking its website down across various countries, including France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and parts of the Middle East.
Alleviating against the DDoS attack
- To remain secure against such attacks, our experts suggest implementing a Web Application Firewall (WAF).
- It is also recommended to use a DDoS protection service that can detect and defend against a DDoS attack.
- Blocking of suspicious packets and clearing of logs are other methods of mitigation against a DDoS attack.
To read more, please check eScan Blog
