2. What is the
DoS attack?
A DoS (denial-of-service) attack is a cyberattack
that makes a computer or other device
unavailable to its intended users. This is usually
accomplished by overwhelming the targeted
machine with requests until normal traffic can no
longer be processed. With a DoS attack, a single
computer launches the attack.
3. Types of
DoS Attack
1. Volume based attacks
2. Protocol based attacks
3. Application layer
attacks
4. Security service to mitigate
Mitigating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks requires a multi-faceted approach that
combines various security services and strategies. Here are some security services and measures
you can implement to help mitigate DDoS attacks:
Mitigating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks requires a multi-faceted approach that
combines various security services and strategies. Here are some security services and measures
you can implement to help mitigate DDoS attacks:
1. Content Delivery Network (CDN): Utilize a CDN to distribute web traffic across multiple servers
and data centers. This helps absorb traffic spikes and filter out malicious requests.
2. Traffic Filtering: Implement traffic filtering solutions that can identify and block malicious traffic
based on predefined rules. Services like AWS Shield, Cloudflare, or specialized DDoS mitigation
appliances can help.
5. Security service to mitigate
3) Rate Limiting and Access Control: Implement rate limiting mechanisms and access controls to limit the number of
requests from a single IP address or source. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) can assist with this.
4) Anycast Routing: Use Anycast routing to distribute traffic to multiple data centers, making it harder for attackers to
pinpoint a single target.
5) Load Balancers: Deploy load balancers to evenly distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any
single server from becoming overwhelmed.
6) Traffic Scrubbing: Employ traffic scrubbing services that analyze incoming traffic and filter out malicious packets
before they reach your network. This is often provided by DDoS mitigation service providers.
7) Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS): Implement IDPS solutions that can detect and block malicious
traffic patterns in real-time.
8) Monitoring and Anomaly Detection: Continuously monitor your network for anomalies in traffic patterns and
behavior. Anomaly detection systems can trigger alerts when unusual activity is detected.
6. Security service to mitigate
9) Cloud-based DDoS Protection: Consider using cloud-based DDoS protection services like AWS Shield,
Azure DDoS Protection, or Google Cloud Armor, which can scale to absorb massive DDoS attacks.
10) Incident Response Plan: Develop a comprehensive incident response plan that outlines the steps to
take in the event of a DDoS attack. This should include communication, mitigation, and recovery
procedures.
11) BGP Anycast Routing with Rate Limiting: Configure Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Anycast routing
with rate limiting to distribute traffic across multiple locations and limit the rate of incoming requests
from each source.
12) Server Hardening: Ensure that your servers are hardened and up to date with security patches to
reduce vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit.
13) DDoS Mitigation Service Providers: Consider partnering with a DDoS mitigation service provider that
specializes in protecting against DDoS attacks. They can offer expertise and dedicated resources to defend
against large-scale attacks.
7. Security service to mitigate
14) Traffic Analysis and Forensics: After an attack, analyze the traffic to understand attack
vectors, sources, and techniques used. This information can help you improve your
defenses for future attacks.
15) Hybrid Defense Strategies: Combine on-premises and cloud-based DDoS mitigation
solutions for a more robust defense strategy.
Remember that DDoS attacks can vary widely in terms of scale and sophistication, so it's
important to have a layered defense strategy that can adapt to different attack types.
Regularly update and test your DDoS mitigation plan to ensure its effectiveness against
evolving threats.
8. Mitigation
Techniques
Mitigating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
attacks involves implementing various techniques and
strategies to reduce the impact of such attacks. Here are
some common mitigation techniques:
• Traffic Rate Limiting: Limit the rate of incoming traffic
from individual IP addresses or ranges to prevent
overwhelming your network or server resources. This
can be done at the network or application layer.
• Anomaly Detection: Use intrusion detection systems
and anomaly detection tools to identify unusual traffic
patterns and behaviors. When anomalies are detected,
traffic can be diverted for further inspection or rate-
limited.
• IP Filtering and Blacklisting: Maintain a list of
known malicious IP addresses and block traffic from
these sources. Keep the blacklist up to date to block
new threats.
9. Mitigation
Techniques
• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Employ a
CDN to distribute and cache content across multiple
servers and locations. CDNs can absorb traffic spikes
and mitigate DDoS attacks by distributing the load.
• Load Balancers: Use load balancers to
distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers,
ensuring that no single server is overwhelmed by the
attack traffic
• eb Application Firewalls (WAFs): Implement WAFs
to filter incoming traffic and block malicious requests.
WAFs can also protect against application-layer DDoS
attacks by analyzing HTTP requests.
• Rate-Based Mitigation: Configure your infrastructure
to monitor traffic rates and automatically block or
divert traffic that exceeds predefined thresholds.
10. Mitigation
Techniques
• Monitoring and Incident Response: Continuously
monitor network traffic and have an incident response
plan in place. When an attack is detected, take
immediate action according to the predefined response
plan.
• Redundancy and Failover: Design your infrastructure
with redundancy and failover mechanisms to ensure
service availability even during DDoS attacks.
• Traffic Scrubbing Services: Consider using third-
party DDoS mitigation providers that specialize in
traffic scrubbing. These services can filter out malicious
traffic and forward clean traffic to your network.
• Rate-Limiting DNS Responses: Implement rate
limiting on DNS responses to protect against
DNS amplification attacks, where attackers abuse open
DNS resolvers.
11. Mitigation
Techniques
• Geographic Blocking: Restrict traffic from
specific geographic regions or countries that are known
sources of DDoS attacks.
• Connection Limits: Set limits on the number of
concurrent connections or sessions that a single IP
address can establish, preventing one source from
monopolizing resources.
• Application and Server Hardening: Secure
your applications and servers by following best
practices, such as regular patching, minimizing
unnecessary services, and disabling unused ports.
• Hybrid DDoS Mitigation: Combine on-premises and
cloud-based DDoS mitigation services for a more
comprehensive defense strategy. Cloud services can
absorb volumetric attacks while on-premises solutions
can handle more application-specific attacks.
12. Mitigation
Techniques
• CAPTCHA Challenges: Introduce CAPTCHA
challenges for suspicious or high-traffic requests to
ensure that the traffic is generated by legitimate users.
• Collaboration with ISPs: Coordinate with
your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to implement
upstream traffic filtering and rate limiting to mitigate
DDoS attacks before they reach your network.
• Encryption and SSL/TLS Offloading: Use
SSL/TLS offloading to reduce the computational load on
your servers and make it more challenging for attackers
to exhaust server resources.
• Remember that DDoS attack techniques
are continually evolving, so it's essential to keep your
mitigation strategies up to date and conduct regular
testing to ensure their effectiveness. A well-prepared
and multi-layered defense strategy is crucial for
protecting your online services from DDoS attacks.
13. Summary of Report on
Recent Trends in DoS Attack 2023
• Target Groups
• In Q1 2023, there was a significant shift in the countries most targeted by HTTP DDoS (Distributed
Denial of Service) attacks. Israel, potentially influenced by judicial reform protests and ongoing
tensions in the West Bank, emerged as the top-targeted country for HTTP DDoS attacks,
surpassing the United States. Approximately 0.072% of all HTTP traffic processed by Cloudflare in
the first quarter of the year was part of HTTP DDoS attacks targeting Israeli websites. The
countries closely following Israel in the ranking were the United States, Canada, and Turkey.
• On a regional scale:
• Gaming & Gambling was the most targeted industry in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In South
and Central America, the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) industry was the most
targeted. In North America, it was the Marketing & Advertising industry followed by
Telecommunications. In Africa, Telecommunications was the most attacked industry. In Oceania,
the Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry was the most targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks.
14. • The distribution of application-layer and network-layer DDoS attacks
by industry:
15. Attacking Groups
In the first quarter of 2023, Finland was the largest source of HTTP DDoS attacks in terms of the
percentage of attack traffic out of all traffic per country. Closely after Finland, the British Virgin
Islands came in second place, followed by Libya and Barbados.
16. At the network layer, Vietnam was the largest source of L3/4 DDoS attack traffic. Almost a third of
all L3/4 traffic the company ingested in Vietnam data centres was attack traffic. Following Vietnam
were Paraguay, Moldova, and Jamaica.
18. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences):
SPSS is a software application used for statistical analysis. It is not a threat; rather, it's a tool
commonly used in social sciences and research for data analysis and statistics.
DNS Amplification:
DNS amplification is a type of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. In this attack, the
attacker sends DNS (Domain Name System) queries to misconfigured DNS servers, which then
respond to the victim with a flood of traffic that overwhelms the victim's resources. It is a threat
used to disrupt online services by flooding them with traffic.
GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation):
GRE is a tunnelling protocol used in networking to encapsulate a wide range of network layer
protocols. It enables the creation of point-to-point connections or virtual private networks (VPNs)
over existing networks. GRE itself is not a threat but is used in various network configurations and
security solutions.
19. Demon Bot:
Demon Bot likely refers to a malicious bot or malware. Such bots can be used for various
cyberattacks, including DDoS attacks or spreading malware. It is considered a threat when used for
malicious purposes.
TeamSpeak3:
TeamSpeak3 is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application commonly used for voice
communication during online gaming, virtual meetings, and other collaborative activities. It is not a
threat but a legitimate communication tool.
LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon):
LOIC is a network stress testing application. While it can be used for legitimate network testing, it
can also be used maliciously in DDoS attacks to flood a target with traffic. When used for malicious
purposes, it is considered a threat.
20. UDP (User Datagram Protocol):
UDP is one of the core Internet transport protocols. It is not inherently a threat but is used
for various network communication tasks. UDP is often associated with DDoS attacks when
exploited to flood targets with traffic.
Lantronix:
Lantronix is a company specializing in IoT (Internet of Things) and networking solutions. It is not
a threat but can be relevant in network security contexts, as the security of IoT devices is
an important consideration for overall network security.
ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol):
ICMP is a network layer protocol used for various network operations and diagnostics. It includes
functions such as ping requests and responses and error messages. ICMP itself is not a threat but
can be abused in certain types of attacks, such as ICMP flooding, which involves overwhelming a
target with ICMP packets to disrupt its connectivity.
21. Approximate estimate of damage inflicted
This quarter the company saw a tectonic shift. With a 22% share, SYN floods moved to the second
place, making DNS-based DDoS attacks the most popular attack vector (30%). Almost a third of all
L3/4 DDoS attacks were DNS-based; either DNS floods or DNS amplification/reflection attacks.
Not far behind, UDP-based attacks came in third with a 21% share.