How to Prevent DDos attack

DDOS

DDoS attacks are becoming a regular incidence, so I am very certain that most folks have heard the term, but however several of you does not truly grasp what its all about that or if you are in peril of being a victim of this kind of attacks? This is often why I've determined to jot down a brief guide and tell you everything there's to know about Distributed Denial of Service. Since this is mostly for people who are not that tech-savvy, we're going to keep things as simple as doable.

Let's start by talking about DoS AKA Denial of Service. This type of attack is intended to overwhelm your bandwidth by bombarding it with data packages, sending a lot of requests than the server is able to handle. If you're interested, the technical term is flooding and the principle is pretty simple: imagine the electrical grid in your apartment; if you plug in too many things spontaneously, you will overload it and everything will shut down. On the Internet, things are pretty much similar and if the data packages that you are receiving exceed the available capability you will not be able to reach internet any longer.

DDoS attack

However, flooding from a single location is difficult, time-consuming and it can possibly also put a large strain on the attacker's bandwidth. Furthermore, if you're making an attempt to attack larger targets like let's say the PlayStation Network, which is designed to work with thousands of clients at the same time, a single bombardment source will not be enough. Enter DDoS: also known as Distributed Denial of Service, this type of attack works in the same manner as DoS, but it's performed from multiple locations at the same time. Since in many countries it's illegal to voluntarily participate in a DDoS attack, most of them are performed making use of a a botnet, an army of zombified devices connected to the internet that inadvertently attack the target. (To find out more about this, you should read "How to understand if your computer is part of a botnet".) Ironically, there is also a style of self-inflicted DDoS attack, also named Slashdot effect once a website or service gets overpowered by the amount of actual visitors; most typical examples are online stores that go down on Black Friday.

DDos prevention

So, can you be a victim of a DDoS attacks? Regular user usually are not targeted by these attacks as they imply an excessive amount of effort and a very real possibility for the hacker to lose a number of devices from the botnet. However, streamers have been known to be at the receiving finish of DDoS attacks from time to time. If you find yourself targeted by a protracted DDoS attack, the solution is to ask your ISP to alter your IP address. I could tell you that using a proxy or VPN should also be useful in preventing attacks, but honestly speaking it's not effective enough to be definitely worth the effort. Lastly, if your website is being targeted by DDoS attacks, services like Incapsula and Cloudflare can help you out.