According to new data released by Netscout, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are on the rise. There were 17 million such attacks in 2024 – up from 13 million the year before. It’s an astonishing rise that has big implications for your business.
But what exactly is a DDoS attack? And how can I prevent it from happening to my business? In this guide, we’ve put together some helpful tips on how you can avoid falling foul of one of these sophisticated and damaging cybersecurity breaches.
Read on to find out what you can expect if your company suffers a DDoS attack, how to prevent it, and how you can mitigate the damage if the worse happens.
What is a DDoS Attack?
A DDoS attack is an attempt to force a website, network, or computer offline by overloading it with requests. Sometimes, this can happen by accident. Black Friday sales, for instance, can drive a lot of internet traffic towards one destination at once. This might overwhelm the server, causing the website to crash.
But other times, it’s an orchestrated attack designed to bring down a particular target. So-called “hacktivist” groups have been known to use DDoS attacks to support their ideological means. Examples include Anonymous Sudan, which was carried out numerous attacks in support of its “pro-Russian, anti-Western agenda,” according to Netscout.
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DDoS attacks differ from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in that they rely on different IP addresses. In other words, the attack comes from multiple different sources, rather than just one location. This makes the attack much more difficult to defend, and allows the threat actors to generate much more traffic than they might otherwise have been able to.
How Does a DDoS Attack Work?
A DDoS attack works when several different IP addresses target the same platform at the same time, which can overwhelm the server in question and bring it down.
Often, this attack is carried out by what’s known as a “botnet.” A botnet refers to a collection of devices that have been infected with malware, meaning they can be controlled remotely by a single perpetrator. On other occasions, DDoS is executed by several different actors at the same time.
To make matters more complicated, there are a few different types of DDoS attack, while I’ll cover in the section below.
Amplification attacks
In this type of attack, the malicious actors in question send a request to a domain name system (DNS) server with an IP address spoofed to that of the target. This leads to the target being inundated with a large volume of unsolicited responses, which brings down the target server.
Bandwidth saturation
Networks have a finite bandwidth. Once this has been eclipsed, the network is unable to function properly. Attacks of this kind preoccupy this bandwidth by spamming the network with traffic.
Cloud resource exploitation
Cloud resource exploitation refers to attacks that seek to take advantage of cloud computing’s main advantage – its scalability.
Degradation of service
This variation on the DDoS attack doesn’t try to completely knock a server offline. Rather, it hits a server with a moderate volume of spam traffic, which affects the service but remains largely undetected.
DDoS attacks vs DoS attacks
DDoS attacks differ from denial of service (DoS) attacks in that they rely upon several different IP addresses. Because of this, the attack is much harder to pin down and prevent. DoS attacks originate from a single IP address.
What Are the Impacts of DDoS Attacks?
If successful, DDoS attacks pose a number of risks for your business. Below, I’ve broken down some of what you can expect if your company falls victim to one of these breaches.
Financial losses
Your business can incur significant financial losses if subject to a DDoS attack. These can result from network downtime, violation of service-level agreements (SLAs), as well as the potential costs of limiting the damage and getting the network back online.
Reputational damage
If you website is down for too long, your customers might take their business elsewhere. If it happens more than once, they might lose faith in your business and become a regular patron of your competitors.
Operational impact
Most prominently, DDoS attacks are designed to knock a service offline. This will affect your business’s ability to carry out its operations, and can lead to the other two points outlined above.
Steps to Prevent a DDoS Attack
Luckily, there are some measures that businesses can take to safeguard themselves against the risk of a DDoS attack. Read on for a breakdown of different approaches that you can take.
Rate limiting
This refers to the practice of limiting the number of requests that a server will accept in a specified time period. It’s a commonly used defense mechanism against DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, and web scraping, as it puts a cap on bot behavior.
Firewalls
Firewalls regulate incoming and outgoing internet traffic by introducing preset security rules. Essentially, they serve as gatekeepers of your service, and they’re absolutely imperative for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Anycast
Anycast is a large, distributed cloud network that insulates your server from incoming traffic. It provides you with another level of protection against incoming threats, and can be really useful for fielding exceptionally large volumes of traffic.
Famous Examples of DDoS Attacks
With DDoS attacks on the rise, let’s take a look at some of the most prominent examples in recent history.
HTTP/s Rapid Reset attack, 2023
A couple of years ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Cloudflare experienced a record-breaking DDoS attack. Botnet traffic, which has later found to be much smaller than any DDoS attack in history, exploited a “HTTP/2” feature that can trigger rapid request cancellation using the “RST_STREAM” frame. This allowed the attackers to repeatedly open and close streams, which crashed the servers.
Google attack, 2020
A few years before, Google fell victim to another large DDoS attack. Three different internet service providers (ISPs) from China launched an attack on thousands of Google IP addresses, which lasted for six months. At the time, it was four times larger than the next biggest DDoS attack.
AWS attack, 2020
In a bad year for cybersecurity, AWS was targeted by a massive DDoS attack in 2020. This one targeted a specific, unidentified AWS customer, lasting for three days and peaking at 2.3 terabytes of data sent to their IP address per second.
What To Do in the Event of a DDoS Attack
As with all cybersecurity breaches, acting quickly is crucial. Here are some things you can do to help your business mitigate the dangers of a DDoS attack.
Set up a server-side firewall limit
As I’ve mentioned above, this will put a lid on incoming traffic and can help to slow down and block the attack. However, it’s not a silver bullet solution – it can lead to legitimate users being locked out of your service.
Configure server request rate limits
Adjust your server settings to introduce some limits on traffic and requests. This can stop simple attacks, but again, might deter legitimate users from accessing your service.
Add new servers
Boosting your server capacity will allow you to handle more traffic. However, it will not get to the root of the problem – the bad actors attempting to bring down your network.
Change domain DNS records
Redirect incoming traffic to alternative servers in order to reduce the burden on individual servers. You could even hire a content delivery network (CDN) to help you.
