And in 75% of cases, without proper protection against DDoS attacks, this becomes possible because the ease of implementing an attack nowadays is within the reach of even schoolchildren wanting to show off. The problem is that many companies do not pay enough attention to security, believing that their business is not an "attractive target" for hackers. This opinion is wrong, and in fact, large corporations are less often of interest to attackers because they have a more serious approach to their own security. But the information SMB sectors of enterprises may not be sufficiently protected, so they become easy prey. Since the data that can be compromised as a result of an attack is very often critical for users and the company. For example, as a result of such a distracting maneuver as DDoS attacks or the identification of vulnerabilities as a result, it creates great risks of stealing valuable information, which can then be used. Also, no one has canceled the cost of business downtime, which can become critical for a company of any size, especially if the company's condition and its current risks do not include prolonged downtime. According to statistics, the attack comes in impulses at intervals and immediately at maximum with a duration of up to one week on average, but sometimes longer. EdgeЦентр expert Maxim Bolshakov explained how DDoS attacks can harm a business and what actions should be taken for effective protection against them.
Forewarned is forearmed
DDoS attacks come in various types and forms, but they are based on the principle of mass use of multiple devices directed at one server or a large stream of requests. As a result, the server becomes overloaded, which prevents it from serving requests from ordinary users and makes the resource unavailable. In such attacks, hackers can use viruses and malware that are activated on devices without the consent of their owners and used to attack servers.
DDoS attacks are of different types: network attacks at the application level and at the protocol level. It is important to be able to distinguish them and understand how to counter them. Network attacks, such as SYN Flood and UDP Flood, are aimed at overloading network traffic, which can lead to denial of service. Such attacks use a high data transfer rate to fill the available bandwidth, which prevents authorized users from accessing the resource and makes it unavailable. That is, for example, if you have an Internet channel the size of a water tap, and at the time of the attack, it turns out to be under pressure the width of the Volga River, then the tap will not withstand such colossal pressure and, as a result, will let everything through that they are trying to let through it.
The goal of an application-level attack is to exhaust application resources, such as processor time or memory. This can lead to slowdowns or complete shutdown of the application. Such activities can be difficult to detect because they mimic the behavior of ordinary users.
Attacks at the protocol level (for example, Ping of Death and Smurf Attack) exploit vulnerabilities in communication protocols. They can cause system failures by using specific features of protocols to cause buffer overflows or other errors. Here, as in life, you can imagine an escalator in the subway, where there is a flow of people. Some people get off it, and others get on - this is a process in which one to two people stand on each step with a distance of 1 step between them. Now imagine that if people did not get off it, but continued to go around in circles (this is of course impossible, but this is an allegory) and none of the arriving passengers could get on it. Then the queue would accumulate endlessly and the whole process would be disrupted. This is what happens as a result of this kind of attack - all the places are taken, and legitimate requests cannot go through the standard process, because everything is occupied and overloaded.
Protection methods
There are a number of alarming signs indicating that your resources are being attacked. For example, a freezing site, incorrect software operation, a sharp and atypical increase in server load, user complaints about errors and long page loading times. All this is a reason to be wary and think about methods of protection against DDoS attacks at the infrastructure level. What can be done?
1. Use DDoS protection services. These are special cloud solutions, such as Cloudflare or Akamai, that provide traffic filtering and redirection services to reduce the impact of DDoS attacks. But in Russia it is very difficult now and it is easier to seek protection from local providers.
2. Control loads using CDN. It distributes traffic between multiple servers, reducing the load on individual nodes and increasing overall resistance to attacks. A kind of distribution, the main thing in the architecture is to ensure that all traffic is not carried to one point, which often the server will not survive without a trace.
3. Configure and filter traffic at the network equipment level. To reduce the risk of malicious data entering the network, configure firewalls and routers to filter suspicious traffic.
Identify and neutralize
Automating the process of detecting and neutralizing DDoS attacks significantly increases the level of protection and resilience of an organization to cyber threats. Companies are moving away from manual management and prefer to trust modern technologies, because DDoS attacks can develop very quickly, and manual intervention is often too slow to respond effectively. Automation allows the system to instantly identify and eliminate threats, minimizing downtime.
Automated management also frees up resources and employee time, who can focus on more complex tasks and strategic planning, instead of routine monitoring. Even modern systems have resistance to changing threats. They achieve this by using machine learning algorithms to analyze traffic behavior and identify unusual patterns.
An additional advantage of automated tools is the ability to process huge amounts of data and identify anomalies with high accuracy, which reduces the risk of false positives and missed attacks. Investments in automation reduce the cost of managing cybersecurity in the long term, as they reduce the need for a large number of specialists and reduce possible losses from downtime.
Summing up, we can say that the process of detecting and neutralizing DDoS attacks can be automated due to the following components.
1. Using traffic monitoring systems with machine learning capabilities. They analyze traffic in real time and identify anomalies that may indicate a DDoS attack.
2. Setting rules for automatically blocking suspicious IP addresses. Automated systems respond quickly to threats by blocking IP addresses from which suspicious traffic is coming.
3. Implementing behavioral analysis of users to identify anomalies. By analyzing user behavior, systems respond to unusual activity that may be related to an attack.
4. Regularly updating the Risk Management list, where you provide for all implementation scenarios and consequences that may disable your business and how you compensate for them. By installing protection, by disconnecting external services from the world, or are you willing to risk and incur losses in the business for, say, 6 days.
Maxim Bolshakov,
Head of Security, EdgeЦентр