A DDOS attack is a hacking term that means distributed denial of service. In this attack, the attacker is usually targeting your web servers and wants them to stop responding to requests. Thus, as a result, taking down any system that is using your web server. This is a big issue as in large-scale companies, their webserver/services are being used by multiple clients around the world. And taking down such server(s) can in reality affect millions of people in one single attack.
Mostly the mindset behind carrying out such attacks is to gain ransom and take the webserver hostage. By doing this, the attacker gets total control over the response time of server requests. And he/she can either keep it stuck in an infinite loop or delay it for as long as they like.
Understanding DDOS and loopholes in your system
To understand this attack, you need to understand that this directly affects the communication layer between the frontend and backend. And there might be some opening for the frontend to access some data in an irregular manner from the backend. The backend (server and DBS) have allowed the frontend to ask for data in this irregular manner. And have not implemented enough checks to stop this. Or in worse case scenarios the backend was designed in such a way to incorporate this irregular behavior.
In the latter case, the damage would be more vast. As some parts of the system will need to be redesign to avoid this behavior and possible DDOS. The first case is more or less curable instantly by tackling it on the fly. Meaning diagnosing the service that has the most load in this case. And simply limiting its request count from one specific IP or region. The attacker might mimic different locations and IPs as a counterattack. This can also be dealt with by keeping a check on the frequency of requests.
Preventing DDOS attack
Thanks to the revolutions in cyber security the DDOS is now understood. And is on some scale prevented by the majority of IT companies out there. The key to prevention lies in implementing solid strategies at the time of development; and quick response to any new attack. During the initial development, we can keep in mind all the possible loopholes and implement preventive measures. Such as throwing too many request errors or irregular request pattern errors. Obviously to get to the point to generate these errors you need to first have that mechanism in place.
Again, thanks to the many available frameworks out there. This task has now become somewhat easy as the majority of modern frameworks come with somewhat predefined cybersecurity measures. For beginners who are starting off with small-scale projects, this level of security is enough. But for larger organizations, it is crucial that they take this security one step further. Because attackers who target larger organizations are more advanced and have more tricks up their sleeves.
Responding to DDOS
In a nutshell, the response to a DDOS should be right away. If you see any particular service down and chances of DDOS on that container. Then your safest bet would be to take down that container. And turn on a previously available copy of that container. This has to be done immediately as a simple service level DDOS has the potential to spread across your whole server setup and every single service on it if not dealt with immediately.
Since this is generation Z, and the attacks are more dynamic with the latest AI approaches. The attack or malware causing DDOS or DoS attack actually evolves with time. Learning from your preventive measures the malware is actually aware of what route to take and where to reside on the server where it has the lowest chances of being discovered. So, always better to be quick on the scene, even to the degree if it means waking up from sleep and dealing with it right away. Larger organizations actually make this situation clear to their cyber security experts very early on in their careers that will be required to take actions in such scenarios within such time frames.
The best possible bet is to find the service/server affected relatively sooner and taking it down, and switching on a clone instead. If the malware is virtually undetectable then keep the service/server live and just replace your config of the system to read from a duplicate/clone version instead. Hence the malware will keep eating this older service and your system will be running fine on the new clone/backup service. This procedure is widely used and is termed ‘honey potting‘.
Is DDOS attack inevitable?
In short Yes, it is more likely to happen when your system is growing in terms of data or customers. Because this is the time when your system is gaining more popularity and more people will be trying to break its security. We say ‘people’ here rather than attackers because this is true. People, even those who have very little knowledge about cyber security might find a way to break the system or put it in a DDOS state. It is always better to check your services against DDOS and other common vulnerabilities ahead of time and keeping in mind that this is something you will eventually face if not handled initially.
Conclusion
Any kind of cyber attack will surely catch you off guard as nobody is really hoping for it to happen when things are going smoothly. Hence, as mentioned above you should always keep this in the back of your head that a DDOS is prune to happen at some point when your system is growing/gaining popularity. DDOS is most likely to happen intentionally but could also occur accidentally. For example, some buggy code could be hitting one service infinitely in a certain condition and the developers and QA might have missed it. So, no need to panic as long as you are quick to respond and are responding in the upper mentioned fashion.
Hope you never have to face such an attack, may the cyber security force be with you!