PhilipDon’t let a DDoS attack bring your business to a halt! You can guard against devastating attacks and maintain your network performance with the proper protections. Learn how to defend against DDoS attacks and what are the worst ones you need to know about!
What is the objective of DDoS attacks?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attack on a digital system or network to make it inaccessible or severely slow down its performance. The purpose of a DDoS attack is to cause disruption and damage to the targeted system or network. The attacker will typically send large amounts of malicious traffic to the system or network to overwhelm it, thus denying other users access to its resources or services. In some cases, the attack may even be targeted at specific systems or users. The ultimate goal of a DDoS attack is to render the system or network useless to its users and owners.
3 Worst DDoS Attacks that you need to know about
The world has seen some of the worst DDoS attacks ever in the last few years. These attacks have been so vast and significant that they have even made their way into the headlines. Here are three of the worst DDoS attacks that you need to know about:
The Mirai botnet DDoS attack was the most destructive attack of its kind to date. The attack took down the US-based web hosting service Dyn in 2016 and affected the websites of hundreds of thousands of users. The attack utilized many unprotected devices, such as digital video recorders and cameras, to launch the massive attack. It was estimated that more than 100,000 devices participated in the attack.
The attack on GitHub, an online code repository, happened in February 2018 and involved 1.3 Terabits of data sent to its servers. The powerful attack caused service disruption for nearly 10 minutes, and its effects were felt for hours afterward. The overwhelming amount of data sent to the servers overwhelmed its bandwidth and resources, thus making them inaccessible. The culprit behind the attack was never identified.
Suggested page: DDoS amplification attacks by Memcached
One of the most recent large-scale attacks occurred in August 2020. This attack was carried out by Chinese actors using servers located in China. The attack was estimated to reach more than 1.5 Tbps, making it the most significant DDoS attack the world has ever seen. The targets of the attack included a major financial services company, several gaming platforms, and a large media company. The attack was conducted using sophisticated methods.
How can you avoid them?
DDoS Protection is one of the most effective methods for preventing DDoS attacks. DDoS protection identifies and blocks malicious traffic before it reaches the target system or network. This is done by using techniques such as rate limits and IP blocking. As a result, DDoS protection can block unwanted traffic from accessing a system or network and reduce the impact of a DDoS attack.
Private DNS servers are another effective way of preventing DDoS attacks. These are secure, private systems that are not publicly accessible. Using a private DNS server means attackers cannot reach the target network or system, as the DNS requests will not be visible to them. This makes it difficult for attackers to collect information such as IP addresses and access points.
Round-Robin DNS is also a helpful traffic distrubition technique for stopping DDoS attacks. Round Robin DNS spreads out DNS requests among multiple servers, thus making it more difficult for attackers to target a single server. Using this approach, attackers cannot focus their efforts on a single server and must spread the attack over multiple servers.
Finally, DNSSEC is an essential protocol for protecting against DDoS attacks. DNSSEC is a cryptographic system for signing DNS records, making it possible to verify that the returned records are genuine and have not been tampered with. This prevents attackers from hijacking the DNS requests and directing them to malicious servers or networks.
Conclusion
Protecting your digital systems and networks is a must in today’s world, and the impact of a DDoS attack can be devastating. Knowing the most common DDoS attacks and how to prevent them can help you guard your system against these malicious attacks and keep up the performance of your network. In addition, by understanding the latest tactics and techniques attackers use, you can mitigate these attacks and safeguard your system from future threats.