If your website has political content, accepts online payments, or if you run a profitable business – DDoS attack can happen at any moment. The abbreviation DDoS can be translated from English as 'Distributed Denial of Service.' And protection of the web server from DDoS attacks is the most important part of quality hosting.
Simply put, DDoS attack it is an overload of the server so it cannot serve visitors. Hackers take control of a computer network and send a huge number of empty requests to the target server. The size of a botnet can range from several dozen to several hundred thousand computers. The server is forced to respond to all requests, fails to handle the load, and crashes.
DDoS attack protection systems
Dealing with DDoS attacks can be done through hardware methods. Firewalls are connected to the server equipment to decide whether to allow traffic to pass further. Their firmware contains algorithms that determine the vast majority of attacks. If the power of the attack does not exceed the certification values, the equipment will operate normally. The downside – limited bandwidth and difficulty redistributing traffic.
A more popular approach is using a filtering network. Since the traffic is generated by a botnet, utilizing many computers to combat empty traffic is the most optimal solution. The network accepts the traffic, filters it, and only verified and quality traffic from real users reaches the target server. The main advantage of this approach is the ability to flexibly adjust the protection. Advanced hackers have learned to disguise malicious traffic as regular visitor traffic. Only an experienced information security specialist can recognize bad traffic.
To protect against such attacks, providers and hosting companies create networks that filter traffic. In extreme cases, it is possible to connect to third-party traffic cleansing nodes.
The network architecture consists of three layers: routing, packet processing, and application layers. At the routing level, traffic is evenly distributed among network nodes thanks to high-performance routers. At the packet processing level, several mutually redundant devices filter incoming traffic using specific algorithms. At the application level, encryption, decryption, and request processing occur. Reports on attack power and duration, as well as reports on cleanup, can be reviewed if necessary.
Company ProHoster will protect your website from DDoS attacks of up to 1.2 Tb/s. Baseline protection templates are built by default for each server type to defend against simple DDoS attacks. For questions regarding protection of the web server from DDoS attacks please contact our technical support. Don't wait for your server to go down – protect it today!
