DDoS attacks are on the rise. Indeed, in the first six months of 2022, the number of malicious DDoS attacks rose by 203% compared to the first six months of 2021. This is a problem for company, since these attacks can cause a lot of damage.
However, having a good understanding of DDoS attacks is essential for any business that wants to stay safe online.
What is DDoS?
DDoS stands for “distributed denial of service”. It is a type of cyber attack that seeks to disable a computer or network by flooding the IP address with requests, making it unavailable to users.
A DDoS attack can be launched by a botnet, which is a network of infected computers under the control of a malicious actor. The attacker use the botnet to send a large number of requests to the target computer or network, overwhelming it and causing it to crash. Since they can come from many different computers at once, DDoS attacks can be very difficult to defend against.
These attacks can have a number of effects, depending on the target. They can cause a network to slow down or a website to crash, making it unavailable to users. But DDoS attacks can even result in data breaches, as the target computer or network may be unable to process all of the requests that are being sent to it. As a consequence a company may suffer from financial loss but also a reputational damage.
Types of DDoS attacks
There are different types of DDoS attacks. Here are some of the most common:
- Ping Of Death
A Ping of Death attack is a type of DDoS attack that seeks to disable a computer or network by taking advantage of a flaw in the way that some computers process Ping requests. The attacker will send a Ping request that is larger than the maximum size that the computer can handle, resulting in the computer crashing. - Smurf attacks
Smurf attacks are similar to ping of death attacks. However, they have a greater potential for damage as they make better use of the characteristics of transmission networks. - SYN floods
A SYN flood is a type of DDoS attack that seeks to disable a computer or network by taking advantage of a flaw in the way that some computers process requests to establish a connection. The attacker will send a large number of SYN requests to the target system, but will not respond to the SYN-ACK response that the system sends back, never completing the connection. This can cause the system to run out of resources and crash. - DNS amplification attack
A DNS amplification attack is a type of attack that seeks to disable a computer or network by amplifying the DNS traffic that is sent to the target system. The attacker will send a large number of DNS requests to public DNS servers, which will then respond with even larger DNS responses. This can overload the target system and cause it to crash. - Teardrop attacks
A teardrop attack is a type of attack that seeks to disable a computer or network by sending it a series of fragments that overlap. This can cause the system to crash because it is unable to reassemble the fragments correctly.
How can you tell if your company is under a DDoS attack?
There are a few signs that your company may be under a DDoS attack. These include:
- your website is slow or unavailable,
- your email is slow or unavailable,
- the network is slow or unavailable,
- you see increased traffic from strange locations,
- you see a large number of error messages.
If you notice any of these signs, it is important to take action immediately. DDoS attacks can cause a lot of damage, and the sooner you can identify and stop the attack, the better.
What to do to protect your company from DDoS attacks
There are some steps that you can take to reduce risks:
- Choosing a team of competent IT experts: the IT staff is the first resource you have to protect the company. They can suggest tools and best practices for cybersecurity.
- Training your employees: DDoS attacks often take advantage of human error. So it’s important to train your employees on cybersecurity best practices, such as not clicking on links from unknown sources and being wary of attachments to emails.
- Having a cybersecurity plan and a DDoS mitigation plan in place: this plans should include steps for identifying DDoS attacks and for mitigating the damage that they can cause.
- Having a good backup plan: thanks to regular backups, if the primary website or network is taken down by a DDoS attack, a company would still be able to operate.
- Constant updating: outdated software can be vulnerable to DDoS attacks. So it’s important to keep your software up-to-date and to install security updates as soon as they are available.
- Slowing rate limits: limiting the traffic that your network can handle helps you to prevent it from being overwhelmed by a DDoS attack.
- Relying on multiple servers: multiple servers can handle more requests. This way, if one server is overloaded, the other servers can still handle the traffic.
- Using a content delivery network (CDN): a CDN is a network of servers that can help to distribute the traffic from a DDoS attack and reduce the risk of the target computer or network being overloaded.
- Implementing a DDoS protection service: a DDoS protection service can help to filter out malicious traffic, identify attacks or stop them before they cause too much damage.
