Imagine trying to open your company website and seeing it stuck loading. A minute later, it crashes completely. Customers start calling. Emails flood in. Your business feels frozen.
You might be under a DDoS Attack.
Nowadays, DDoS attacks are common. The average global growth of DDoS attacks has increased by 94%. According to ASD, Australia has seen an increase in DDoS attacks recently.
DDoS attacks are hitting businesses of every size. Knowing what it is and how it works, you can defend against them.
In this guide, we will cover everything you need to know about DDoS attacks and how to defend against them with the help of IT support.
What Is a DDoS Attack?
DDoS attack stands for Distributed Denial-of-Service attack.
It is a malicious attempt to disrupt your system, server, website, IoT devices, or network by overwhelming the targeted system or its surroundings.
In simple words, hackers flood your system with so much network traffic that the intended user can’t use the service. The attacks interrupt or suspend the services temporarily of its hosting server.
Unlike traditional denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, DDoS attacks come from multiple compromised devices. The devices are often distributed globally, forming a botnet.
The botnets are generally infected by malware and come under the control of a malicious actor. It is a network of infected machines called zombie computers.
Think about a road where you need to go from Brisbane to Logan City. When you start from your home, you see many traffic from random places simply moving to Logan City where they don’t need to go. Their target is to prevent you from going to Logan City and hamper your workflow.
Because the attacks come from so many places, it is extremely hard to block without real users.
How Does a DDoS Attack Work?
When the attackers form a botnet, they are now able to send instructions to each member of the botnet to send unexpected traffic to the targeted system.
After targeting a victim’s system, the attackers send traffic requests to the target’s IP address through the botnet. As a result, they generate overwhelming traffic to the system, and the system results in a denial-of-service to the real users.
Types of DDoS Attacks
The attackers use different types of attack strategies for DDoS attacks. You can categorise them mostly into 3 categories. We have discussed these 3 types below.
1. Volumetric Attacks
The volumetric attacks are the most common types of DDoS attacks. Attackers use User Datagram Protocol (UDP floods), Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) floods, or connection exhaustion to amplify the traffic to the victim’s server.
The attackers use DNS amplification methods, where they use small queries to generate massive responses targeting your server.
Think about the DNS amplification like this: someone calls a restaurant and orders everything from the restaurant. He calls many restaurants and also asks to repeat the orders and provides a false contact number(the victim’s number).
In this method, the attackers generate very overwhelming responses with minimum effort.
They make requests to an open DNS server with a spoofed IP address (the victim’s IP address). The targeted IP address then receives massive false traffic, where identifying the real traffic and blocking the fake traffic becomes a real challenge.
2. Protocol Attack
Protocol attacks go after your equipment and overconsume it, such as routers, firewalls, servers, and load balancers. After overconsuming the resources, the attacks cause a service disruption.
The common methods of protocol attacks are SYN flood and RST-Fin flood.
- SYN Flood: Here, the hacker sends a flood of half-completed connection requests to exhaust system resources. Your server keeps waiting for responses that never come, eventually crashing.
- RST/FIN Flood: The attackers send RST packets or FIN packets to use the resources of the targeted victim and cause disruption in services.
3. Application Layer Attacks
The application layer attack is a method of DDoS attack where attackers target the application layer/actual application of a targeted network, such as the CPUs, Memories, websites, application processes, or email servers.
This method of attack is also known as a Layer 7 attack.
The attackers attempt to take advantage of flaws in application protocols like FTP, SMTP, VOIP, HTTP, and HTTPS.
The goal of the attacks is to make the application unusable or unresponsive to actual users by sending excessive requests.
- Slowloris Attack: A Slowloris attack targets web servers by opening many connections and keeping them active with partial HTTP requests. The attacker sends small pieces of data at intervals, tying up server resources and blocking real users.
- HTTP Flood Attack: An HTTP flood attack overwhelms a server with a high volume of fake HTTP GET or POST requests. Using botnets, attackers exhaust server resources, causing a denial-of-service attack on your system.
Motive and Consquences of DDoS Attack
The motives of DDoS attacks depend on their goal. The attackers may deploy DDoS attacks due to the following motives.
- Financial Extortion: Attackers may demand a ransom to stop the attack. This is called Ransom DDoS (RDDoS). They hit you hard, then send a message: “Pay us, or it will continue.”
- Business Sabotage: Dirty competition is real. A competitor might secretly hire attackers to cripple your site during peak sales periods, promotions, or launches.
- Testing Weapons or Skills: New hackers — or cybercriminal gangs — might use DDoS attacks to practice their skills or test new attack tools before bigger missions.
- Political or Social Protest (“Hacktivism”): Groups sometimes use DDoS Attacks to protest against companies, governments, or organisations they oppose. Their goal is to make a statement, not to steal anything.
Whatever the motive behind the DDoS attack, you may face the following consequences.
Loss of Sales and Reputation Due to Downtime
Your website or online services can go offline. Every minute of downtime means lost sales and frustrated users.
For e-commerce businesses, this can mean thousands of dollars lost in just an hour.
Aside from this, customers trust your business if you are available when they need you. But downtime can make your business look unreliable.
Once you lose trust, it is very hard to win it back again.
Pose Security Risks
Sometimes, a DDoS Attack is a distraction. While you are busy fighting the attack, hackers might try to steal sensitive data, install malware, or break into your network.
This is called a multi-vector attack, and it’s becoming more common.
Increased Operational Costs
Besides lost sales, you may face emergency IT costs, fines for missed Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and higher hosting bills.
You also may have to upgrade your systems, hire emergency help, or pay for DDoS Protection Services after an attack.
Dealing with the aftermath can be expensive.
Signs Your Network Might Be Under a DDoS Attack
How do you understand that your network is under a DDoS attack? Well, here are clear warning signs.
- You will notice sudden spikes in network traffic without any marketing campaigns or special events.
- Your website slows down or freezes.
- You will see unusual drops in website performance at strange hours.
- You may notice lags or downtime with your internal system, like email servers.
- Your network’s firewall or load balancer will work harder than usual.
How Can IT Support Defend Against a DDoS Attack?
Don’t panic from a DDoS attack. Just be patient, think about the issue, and let an IT support service provider handle it.
An IT support provider can help you protect against DDoS attacks in the following ways.
1. They Take Effective DDoS Mitigation Strategies
Good DDoS mitigation starts with planning.
You need strong firewalls, load balancers, and smart configurations ready before anything happens.
Cloud-based protection platforms can absorb attacks before they hit your network.
IT support will take these effective strategic actions with all the supportive resources that you don’t need to be bothered with.
2. Network Monitoring and Traffic Analysis
Constant network monitoring is crucial.
Implementing professional network monitoring tools by your IT support providers helps spot spikes in network traffic early. This helps you to have extra time to respond to the occurrence quickly.
Alerts for abnormal traffic patterns are lifesavers during a DDoS attack.
3. Setting Rate Limit
Rate limiting helps control the flow of incoming requests to your servers.
By setting limits on how often a user (or bot) can request information from your IT support provider, you can prevent a flood of fake traffic from overwhelming your system.
It’s a simple but highly effective way to slow down attackers.
4. Traffic Scrubbing to Filter Out the Bad
Traffic scrubbing is like giving your network a deep clean.
Scrubbing services analyse incoming traffic– bad traffic is filtered out; good traffic continues normally.
You can partner with a DDoS Protection Service specialising in this.
They operate global networks designed to withstand even the largest attacks.
In February 2018, GitHub endured the largest recorded DDoS attack, absorbing 1.35 Tbps of traffic via misconfigured memcached servers.
Rapid mitigation by Akamai’s Prolexic through traffic scrubbing minimised disruption. The attackers relented and gave up the attack after 8 minutes.
Outsourcing protection means you can focus on your business while experts handle the threats.
It’s a key step to keeping your site available to real customers.
5. Using a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) defends against application layer attacks. It filters out suspicious traffic targeting your applications.
Deploying a WAF means attackers can’t easily exploit vulnerabilities on your website or mobile apps.
You can trust professional IT support providers to set up a smart WAF that keeps attackers out of your network while keeping your system fast and accessible to the real users.
6. Leveraging a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) spreads your website across servers worldwide. If one server gets attacked, traffic is automatically rerouted through others.
This reduces the impact and keeps your site online even during heavy DDoS Attacks.
Professional IT support helps configure and manage CDNs, ensuring that your website can reroute traffic automatically if a server is under attack.
7. Developing an Incident Response Plan
Preparation is your best defence.
Professional IT providers help you create a detailed Incident Response Plan covering everything from technical shutdowns to public communication strategies.
They also rehearse these plans with your team so that when an attack happens, panic doesn’t.
The plan for immediate response helps you to get the answer to:
- Who do you call first?
- Which services do you shut down?
- How do you communicate with customers?
Final Thought
A DDoS Attack can feel terrifying. But you are not helpless. With the right protection strategies, smart technology, and reliable partners, you can defend your business against even the strongest attacks.
At ItTechBox, we specialise in providing DDoS mitigation, network monitoring, and full DDoS protection services designed to meet your needs.
Stay protected. Stay online. Trust ItTechbox to shield your business when it matters most.
