DDoS attack
What is a DDoS attack?
A DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) refers to a large-scale, coordinated cyberattack in which a website, network or system is brought to a standstill by an excessive volume of requests or data packets.
Types of DDoS attacks
- Volume-based attacks: Volume-based attacks are the traditional DDoS attacks. They overload network bandwidth by generating massive amounts of traffic (e.g. via spurious requests). Examples include UDP and ICMP floods. They are measured in bits per second.
- Protocol attacks: These target network protocols such as TCP or DNS to overload network resources. Protocol attacks are measured in packets per second. An example is the so-called SYN flood.
- Application-layer attacks: These attacks are specifically targeted at (web) applications, for example by overloading a web server with HTTP requests. Application-layer attacks can be measured in requests per second.
Protection against DDoS attacks
A DDoS attack can be identified by the fact that it consumes significantly more network resources than normal data traffic. It therefore makes sense to filter traffic to detect and block anomalies. Cloud-based solutions or specialized security services can analyze and block suspicious traffic in real time. Furthermore, companies should implement rate limits, i.e. limit the number of requests per second to prevent overloads. A distributed network infrastructure can also help reduce the attack surface.
