How To Prevent Ddos Attacks On Ps4? The 13 New Answer

Editor: This post was last updated on May 19, 2022.

Nowadays, the term DDoS probably makes the heart of most webmasters beat faster. While many don’t know exactly what a DDoS attack is, they do know the effect: an extremely sluggish or downed website.

In this article, we’ll focus on how to tell if you’ve been DDoSed, how to spot a DDoS attack, and how to protect your website in the future.

Hopefully we can help you deal with DDoS attacks without a full meltdown.

What is a DDoS attack?

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. As the name suggests, a DDoS attack focuses on damaging a service, such as:

a website

an Internet Service Provider (ISP)

the Nasdaq exchange

a NASA probe

a game server

Virtually anything connected to the Internet is a potential target.

The same goes for the source of DDoS attacks: common culprits are hacked web servers and Internet of Things devices like smart appliances, routers, and even CCTV cameras.

Causes can be accidental or intentional. But a large criminal industry has developed that offers DDoS attacks as a service. There is a market for attacks on websites, including competitors who want to tarnish others’ reputations and those who refuse to go online for political reasons.

A DDoS attack works simply like this: an attacker uses a number of computers over the Internet (or what is known as a “botnet”). These machines send a high volume of fake traffic to the target site, all in an attempt to overload server resources and crash the site.

There are many types and sizes of DDoS attacks, and they can be devastating regardless of size. Even a single system (DoS) attack can take down a site, so consider the ruthless efficiency of a multi-system DDoS attack. A powerful DDoS can be as little as one request per second and still wreak havoc on a website.

Some services are specifically targeted. Interestingly, however, the process is largely automated, and most affected websites are selected at random. Of course, this doesn’t matter if you’re a target. Regardless of the reason, the results can be detrimental, especially for an ecommerce site.

If you want to learn more about the types of DDoS attacks, read our guide on what a DDoS attack is.

What are the signs of a DDoS attack?

There are two key indicators that you may be at risk of a DDoS attack:

When the site is unavailable

When accessing the website takes a long time

If you’re seeing these website latency issues unexpectedly, it’s time to investigate.

Legitimate traffic or a DDoS attack?

Since a DDoS attack generates a lot of traffic to your website, a difficult situation arises. How can you tell if your website is suddenly doing really well (in terms of traffic) or if you are currently experiencing a DDoS attack?

When a website goes down due to a surge in legitimate traffic, the time frame is generally short before you’re up and running again. Sustained spikes in traffic are rarely random, and you can likely identify the reasons for them in legitimate cases. Let’s say a big ad campaign or viral content.

However, more subtle attacks are not so easy to spot. Let’s say an online retailer with blackhat hacking skills wants to keep people off a competitor’s website without them knowing. The hacker can DDoS the competitor’s website several times a day — possibly at random times throughout the day, just to annoy the competitor’s customers about how slow the website is. If the hacker’s server was triggering 500 hits per day (nothing out of the ordinary), the site would have gone down at intervals no longer than a few seconds. Even mild DDoS attacks like this one damage the victim’s business and reputation.

In general, the best way to investigate potential DDoS attacks is with analysis tools. Check if a specific traffic source is still querying a specific record long after the website’s Time To Live (TTL) has expired. (This is the timeframe you allow your website to discard stored data and free up resources.) If this is the case, it’s likely a DDoS attack, since legitimate traffic doesn’t behave that way.

How to know if you are DDoSed

Some fairly obvious signs of a DDoS attack are:

Problems accessing your website.

Files load slowly or not at all.

Slow or unresponsive servers, including “too many connections” error messages.

Unusual traffic patterns such as peaks every 5-10 minutes or peaks at unusual times of the day.

A deluge of traffic originating from a single device type, geolocation, or web browser version.

More specific signs of DDoS vary depending on the type of attack.

Live example of a DDoS attack

To give you an idea of ​​what a DDoS attack looks like, we developed this live example of a website receiving DDoSed. Within a few minutes you can observe how the server resources are exhausted and how it affects the performance of the website.

After watching the video, you will be able to better understand the characteristics of an attack on your own websites.

4 steps to defend against a DDoS attack

The following four steps will protect your website from DDoS attacks:

1. Monitor your website activity

Keep a close eye on your network activity so you can spot when something is wrong. This helps you spot traffic spikes and determine if a DDoS attack is occurring.

2. Improve the capacity of your website

Mitigate the impact of traffic spikes by having high enough capacity to maintain good site performance. Hosting solutions with higher processing and storage resources – or those that can auto-scale – handle the load better than lower tiers. And a content delivery network (CDN) helps take some of the weight off, too.

3. Use a website security provider

Many companies sensibly choose not to deal with the DDoS challenge internally and therefore partner with third-party providers such as Sucuri.

4. Use a web application firewall.

For example, the Sucuri website firewall DDoS mitigation feature automatically blocks fake traffic and requests from malicious bots without affecting your legitimate traffic. Our cloud-based network can mitigate large network attacks (Layer 3 and 4) and we specialize in treating Layer 7 attacks on web applications.

What happens as a result of a DDoS attack?

The cost of protecting against a DDoS attack is typically much less than the financial impact of a DDoS attack on your website (or any other hacking attempt).

Since these attacks can cause server downtime, DDoS attacks can put a significant strain on developers or IT resources trying to bring the website back online. Worse, they can significantly disrupt website traffic, user experience, and ultimately the buying process.

For example, an attack on an e-commerce store during the busy holiday shopping season could impact the entire company’s profitability for the year.

How to protect your website after a DDoS attack

While DDoS attacks are common, that doesn’t mean you have to accept them as part of your company’s online presence.

Limiting the number of requests your web server accepts over time is one way to mitigate DDoS attacks. Unfortunately, rate limiting is often not enough to effectively ward off complex DDoS attacks.

On the other hand, using a web application firewall like the Sucuri firewall can go a long way in mitigating a Layer 7 DDoS attack. Because the firewall filters traffic between the Internet and the origin server, it can act as a reverse proxy, protecting the website from malicious traffic.

The Sucuri Web Application Firewall uses a distributed anycast network that distributes data traffic to multiple distributed servers. Because this approach effectively distributes interference and helps make large volumes of traffic more manageable, websites can use this service to further reduce the impact of a DDoS attack.

When it comes to attacks on your website or livelihood, it’s always better to be proactive than reactive.

DDoS attacks have made headlines with increasing frequency in recent months. They are a favored strategy of “hacktivists”, extortionists, and online criminals hoping to create a distraction. In principle, DDoS attacks are very simple. At the simplest level, a collective of compromised, internet-connected machines directs a deluge of data at the target with the goal of slowing its performance by either overloading its connection to the internet or consuming its resources. The result is a website or service that can no longer be used by visitors. If you are a Feedly user, you have recently experienced the results of a DDoS attack. Attackers flooded the RSS feed reader’s servers with data, effectively shutting it down for several days to extort a payment from the company—a sort of modern protection racket. In theory, it’s not difficult to block incoming data packets – firewalls do this all the time – so why is it so difficult to adequately defend a website against a DDoS attack? There are a few reasons for this, most of which are fundamentally related to the fact that it is very difficult to block an attacker’s data without also blocking requests from legitimate users, which would have the same result as not blocking the attacker at all Attack prevented — the website would disappear for these users.

Websites don’t know where the attacks are coming from

It’s not that easy to block an IP address. Botnets often consist of many thousands of infected computers distributed all over the world. It’s possible to block them individually, but blocking all zombie machines without accidentally blocking real requests is a difficult problem.

Firewalls are not designed to deal with DDoS attacks

In order for a firewall to work against a DDoS attack, especially when using protocols like HTTP or DNS, which make up the majority of real usage, it needs to record IPs and a history of their requests. During a DDoS attack, there can be thousands of ever-changing IPs and millions of data packets that need to be tracked in state tables. The memory and processing resources required to do this quickly for each packet are enormous, and most firewalls simply cannot handle the load.

The defense cannot be installed on the hosting provider’s infrastructure

By the time the data gets close to the point of attack, there is such a tide that it’s virtually impossible to do anything other than go offline, which is usually the response of smaller web hosting companies when faced with a DDoS attack – them close the website and IP as the destination so that the service for their other clients is not affected. Routers, switches, firewalls and load balancers are overloaded. Very few web hosting providers have the resources and bandwidth to deal with this type of attack. The defense needs to be built inside the ISP’s networks and at edge nodes, which is one of the ways DDoS mitigation services like CloudFlare help. In short, DDoS attacks are so difficult to mitigate because the attackers know where the victim is, but the victim doesn’t know where the attackers are. Also, it is extremely difficult to tell which packages are from the bad guys and which are legitimate users. Image: flickr/michaelroper

Defining Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to render an online service inaccessible to users, usually by temporarily disrupting or stopping the services of its hosting server.

A DDoS attack is launched from numerous compromised devices, which are often distributed globally in a so-called botnet. It differs from other Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in that it uses a single Internet-connected device (a network connection) to flood a target with malicious traffic. This nuance is the main reason for the existence of these two slightly different definitions.

This is part of an extensive series of cybersecurity guides.

“And that concludes our DDoS party: Escapist Magazine, Eve Online, Minecraft, League of Legends + 8 phone calls.” Tweeted by LulzSec – Jun 14, 2011 at 11:07pm

Broadly speaking, DoS and DDoS attacks can be divided into three types:

Volume based attacks

Includes UDP floods, ICMP floods, and other spoofed packet floods. The aim of the attack is to saturate the attacked site’s bandwidth, and the size is measured in bits per second (bps). protocol attacks

Includes SYN Floods, Fragmented Packet Attacks, Ping of Death, Smurf DDoS and more. This type of attack consumes actual server resources or those of intermediate communication devices such as firewalls and load balancers and is measured in packets per second (pps). Attacks on the application layer

Includes low and slow attacks, GET/POST floods, attacks targeting Apache, Windows, or OpenBSD vulnerabilities, and more. Consisting of seemingly legitimate and innocent requests, these attacks aim to crash the web server and the magnitude is measured in requests per second (RPS).

Common types of DDoS attacks

Some of the most common DDoS attack types are:

UDP flood

A UDP flood is defined as any DDoS attack that floods a target with User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets. The aim of the attack is to flood random ports on a remote host. This causes the host to repeatedly look for the application listening on that port and (if no application is found) respond with an ICMP Destination Unreachable packet. This process consumes host resources, which can ultimately lead to inaccessibility.

ICMP (ping) flood

Similar to the UDP flood attack, an ICMP flood floods the target resource with ICMP echo request (ping) packets, packets generally being sent as quickly as possible without waiting for replies. This type of attack can consume both outgoing and incoming bandwidth, since victim’s servers often try to respond with ICMP Echo Reply packets, resulting in a significant overall system slowdown.

SYN flood

A SYN flood DDoS attack exploits a known vulnerability in the TCP connection sequence (the “three-way handshake”), where a SYN request to initiate a TCP connection with a host is replaced by a SYN ACK response must be answered by that host, and then acknowledged by an ACK response from the requestor. In a SYN flood scenario, the requestor sends multiple SYN requests, but either does not respond to the host’s SYN ACK response, or sends the SYN requests from a spoofed IP address. In either case, the host system continues to wait for an acknowledgment for each of the requests, tying up resources until no new connections can be made, and eventually resulting in a denial of service.

ping of death

In a Ping of Death (“POD”) attack, the attacker sends multiple malformed or malicious pings to a computer. The maximum packet length of an IP packet (including header) is 65,535 bytes. However, the data link layer usually sets limits on the maximum frame size – for example 1500 bytes over an Ethernet network. In this case, a large IP packet is split into multiple IP packets (called fragments), and the receiving host reassembles the IP fragments into a complete packet. In a ping of death scenario, after malicious manipulation of fragment contents, the recipient receives an IP packet that is larger than 65,535 bytes after reassembling. This can overflow memory buffers allocated for the packet, which can result in denial of service for legitimate packets.

Slow

Slowloris is a highly targeted attack that allows a web server to shut down another server without affecting other services or ports on the target network. Slowloris does this by keeping as many connections to the target web server open as long as possible. It achieves this by establishing connections to the target server but only sending a partial request. Slowloris keeps sending more HTTP headers but never completes a request. The target server keeps each of these bogus connections open. Eventually, this causes the maximum pool for concurrent connections to overflow and leads to the denial of additional connections from legitimate clients.

NTP amplification

In NTP amplification attacks, the attacker exploits publicly accessible Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers to overload a target server with UDP traffic. The attack is defined as a reinforcement attack because the challenge-to-response ratio in such scenarios is anywhere from 1:20 to 1:200 or more. This means that any attacker who obtains a list of open NTP servers (e.g. through a tool like Metasploit or data from the Open NTP Project) can easily generate a devastating, high-bandwidth, high-volume DDoS attack.

HTTP flood

In an HTTP flood DDoS attack, the attacker exploits seemingly legitimate HTTP GET or POST requests to attack a web server or application. HTTP floods do not use malformed packets, spoofing, or reflection techniques, and require less bandwidth than other attacks to crash the target page or server. The attack is most effective when it forces the server or application to allocate the maximum possible resources in response to each individual request.

Zero-Day DDoS Attacks

The “zero-day” definition includes all unknown or new attacks that exploit vulnerabilities for which no patch has yet been released. The term is well known among members of the hacking community, where trading zero-day vulnerabilities has become a popular activity.

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Motivation behind DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks are fast becoming the most prevalent type of cyber threat, and according to recent market research, have grown rapidly in both number and volume over the past year. The trend is towards shorter attack durations but larger packets per second attack volume.

Attackers are primarily motivated by:

Ideology – So-called “hacktivists” use DDoS attacks to target websites with which they disagree ideologically.

– So-called “hacktivists” use DDoS attacks to target websites they ideologically disagree with. Business Feuds – Businesses can use DDoS attacks to strategically take down competitor websites, e.g. B. to discourage them from attending a significant event like Cyber ​​Monday.

– Businesses can use DDoS attacks to strategically take down competitor websites, e.g. B. to discourage them from attending a significant event like Cyber ​​Monday. Boredom – Cyber ​​vandals, also known as “script kiddies”, use pre-packaged scripts to launch DDoS attacks. The perpetrators of these attacks are usually bored wannabe hackers looking for an adrenaline rush.

– Cyber ​​vandals, also known as “script kiddies”, use ready-made scripts to launch DDoS attacks. The perpetrators of these attacks are usually bored wannabe hackers looking for an adrenaline rush. Extortion – Criminals use DDoS attacks or the threat of DDoS attacks to extort money from their targets.

– Perpetrators use DDoS attacks or the threat of DDoS attacks to extort money from their targets. Cyber ​​Warfare – Government-authorized DDoS attacks can be used to take down both opposition websites and an enemy country’s infrastructure. LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon): an entry-level DoS attack tool used for cyber-vandalism

Imperva solutions mitigate DDoS damage

Imperva seamlessly and comprehensively protects websites from all three types of DDoS attacks and counters each with a unique toolset and defense strategy:

Volume based attacks

Imperva counters these attacks by absorbing them with a global network of scrubbing centers that scale on demand to mitigate multi-gigabyte DDoS attacks.

protocol attacks

Imperva mitigates these types of attacks by blocking “malicious” traffic before it even reaches the site and using visitor identification technology that distinguishes between legitimate site visitors (humans, search engines, etc.) and automated or malicious clients.

Types of DoS Attacks and DDoS Attacks

DoS and DDoS attacks can take many forms and be used for different purposes. It may be to cause a company to lose business, cripple a competitor, distract from other attacks, or simply cause trouble or make a statement. Below are some common forms of such attacks.

Teardrop Attack

A teardrop attack is a DoS attack that sends countless Internet Protocol (IP) data fragments to a network. If the network tries to recompile the fragments into their original packages, it will not be able to. For example, the attacker can take very large data packets and break them into multiple fragments so the target system can reassemble them. However, the attacker alters how the packet is disassembled to confuse the target system, which is then unable to reassemble the fragments into the original packets.

flood attack

A flooding attack is a DoS attack that sends multiple connection requests to a server, but then fails to respond to complete the handshake. For example, the attacker can send various requests to connect as a client, but when the server tries to communicate back to verify the connection, the attacker refuses to respond. After repeating the process countless times, the server becomes so inundated with pending requests that real clients are unable to connect and the server becomes “busy” or even crashes.

IP fragmentation attack

An IP fragmentation attack is a type of DoS attack that delivers modified network packets that the receiving network cannot reassemble. The network becomes clogged with bulky, unassembled packets that consume all of its resources.

Volumetric Attack

A volumetric attack is a type of DDoS attack used to attack bandwidth resources. For example, the attacker uses a botnet to send a large volume of request packets to a network, overloading its bandwidth with Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo requests. This causes services to slow down or even stop altogether.

protocol attack

A protocol attack is a type of DDoS attack that exploits vulnerabilities in layers 3 and 4 of the OSI model. For example, the attacker can exploit the TCP connection sequence by sending requests but either not responding as expected or responding with a different request using a spoofed source IP address. Unanswered requests consume the network’s resources until it becomes unavailable.

Application-based attack

What is a DDoS attack and how does it work?

The IT industry has seen a steady increase in DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks lately. Years ago, DDoS attacks were perceived as a minor annoyance by inexperienced attackers for fun, and were relatively easy to mitigate. Unfortunately, this condition no longer exists. DDoS attacks are now a sophisticated activity and, in many cases, big business.

InfoSecurity Magazine reported 2.9 million DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2021, a 31% increase over the same period in 2020.

DDoS attacks increased by 31% to 2.9 million attacks in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020

In recent years, we’ve seen an exponential increase in DDoS attacks that have crippled organizations for significant periods of time.

In February 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a DDoS attack sophisticated enough to keep its incident response teams busy for several days, which also affected customers worldwide.

In February 2021, cryptocurrency exchange EXMO fell victim to a DDoS attack that rendered the organization inoperable for almost five hours.

Recently, Australia experienced a significant, sustained, government-sponsored DDoS attack.

Belgium was also the victim of a DDoS attack that targeted the country’s parliament, police and universities.

Hundreds of thousands of unnamed, undocumented but successful DDoS attacks continue every day. In fact, these attacks are the most effective and costly. The DDoS upward trend promises to continue, which means that IT experts with mitigation skills are in high demand.

Raging IT War: What is a DDoS Attack?

Although DDoS attacks are becoming more common, they can be quite advanced and difficult to combat. But what exactly is a DDoS attack and what does DDoS stand for?

DDoS is the abbreviation for Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS attack occurs when a threat actor uses resources from multiple remote locations to attack a company’s online operations. Typically, DDoS attacks focus on generating attacks that manipulate the default settings or even the proper functioning of network devices and services (e.g. routers, name services or caching services). In fact, that’s the main problem.

Sophisticated DDoS attacks don’t necessarily have to take advantage of default settings or open relays. They exploit normal behavior and take advantage of the way the protocols that run on today’s devices were originally designed to run. Just as a social engineer manipulates the standard workings of human communication, a DDoS attacker manipulates the normal workings of the network services we all rely on and trust.

When a DDoS attack occurs, the attacked organization experiences a crippling disruption in one or more of its services as the attack has overwhelmed its resources with HTTP requests and traffic, denying legitimate users access. DDoS attacks are ranked as one of the top four cybersecurity threats of our time, along with social engineering, ransomware, and supply chain attacks.

Modern Warfare: Avoiding confusion about DDoS attacks

It’s relatively easy to confuse DDoS attacks with other cyber threats. In fact, there is a significant lack of knowledge among IT professionals and even cybersecurity professionals as to how exactly DDoS attacks work.

In a DDoS attack, cybercriminals take advantage of normal behavior that occurs between network devices and servers, often targeting the network devices that connect to the internet. Therefore, attackers tend to focus on the edge network devices (e.g. routers, switches) rather than individual servers. A DDoS attack overwhelms the network’s line (bandwidth) or the devices that provide that bandwidth.

Here’s a useful analogy: imagine that multiple people are calling you at the same time, so you can’t make or receive calls or use your phone for anything else. This problem persists until you block these calls through your carrier.

Please note that you will not repair, update or otherwise customize your actual mobile device. Instead, you fix the connection between the attackers and your phone by using your cell phone provider’s blocking service.

Something similar happens with a DDoS attack. Instead of modifying the resource under attack, you apply remediations (also known as countermeasures) between your network and the attacker.

DDoS vs DoS Attacks: What’s the Difference?

It is important not to confuse a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack with a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Although only one word separates the two, these attacks differ significantly in nature.

In fact, a typical DDoS attack manipulates many distributed network devices between the attacker and the victim to perform an unintended attack and exploit legitimate behavior.

A traditional DoS attack does not use multiple distributed devices, nor does it focus on devices between the attacker and the organization. These attacks also do not typically use multiple Internet devices.

Typical DoS attacks can include:

Single source SYN floods: This occurs when an attacker uses a single system to perform a flood attack on SYN packets, thereby manipulating the typical TCP three-way handshake. For example, a SYN flood that someone might create with a Kali Linux computer isn’t a true DDoS attack because the attack originates from only one device. This is the case even if the attacker uses IP address spoofing. A real DDoS attack is generated by network layer devices for network layer devices. In other words, you’re using multiple routers or memcache servers to attack a network.

This occurs when an attacker uses a single system to perform a SYN packet flood attack and manipulate the typical TCP three-way handshake. For example, a SYN flood that someone might create with a Kali Linux computer isn’t a true DDoS attack because the attack originates from only one device. This is the case even if the attacker uses IP address spoofing. A real DDoS attack is generated by network layer devices for network layer devices. In other words, you’re using multiple routers or memcache servers to attack a network. The “Ping of Death”: Years ago, some network drivers contained buggy code that would crash a system if it received an ICMP packet with certain parameters.

Years ago, some network drivers contained buggy code that would crash a system if it received an ICMP packet with certain parameters. The Slow Loris Attack: The Slow Loris attack is often referred to as a DDoS attack, but since the attack is targeting a specific server (a web server in this case) and typically does not use any intermediate network devices, it is usually a traditional DoS attack.

Each of the above DoS attacks exploit software or kernel vulnerabilities in a specific host. To fix the problem, repair the host and/or filter out the traffic. If you can update a server to mitigate an attack, it is not considered a traditional DDoS attack.

Remember that in a DDoS attack, the threat actor employs a resource consuming strategy. This strategy involves using seemingly legitimate requests to overload systems that are in fact not legitimate, leading to system problems.

Attack Strategy: Types of DDoS Attacks

There are three general types of DDoS attacks.

1. Application layer Attacks on the application layer target the actual software that provides a service, e.g. B. Apache Server, the most popular web server on the internet, or any application offered through a cloud provider. This is the most common form of DDoS attack and is often referred to as a Layer 7 attack, after the corresponding application layer number in OSI/RM. 2. Protocol This occurs when an attack consumes the resources of critical servers and network-based devices, such as B. the operating system of a server or firewalls. While these resources are overloaded, balancers are loaded. Protocol attacks often involve the manipulation of traffic at layers 3 and 4 of the OSI/RM (the network and transport layers, respectively). This is the second most common form of DDoS attack. 3. Volumetric This occurs when an attack consumes the resources of critical servers and network-based devices, such as B. the operating system of a server or firewalls. While these resources are overloaded, balancers are loaded. Protocol attacks often involve the manipulation of traffic at layers 3 and 4 of the OSI/RM (the network and transport layers, respectively). This is the second most common form of DDoS attack.

In some cases, IT and cybersecurity professionals consider protocol and application-based DDoS attacks as one category.

Gathering Intelligence: Why You Need to Know About DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks are becoming more and more of a problem, and IT pros need to be prepared for them.

Layer 7 attacks increased through 2020-2021, according to CloudFlare.

According to Comparitech, the number of DDoS attacks with a volume of more than 100 GB/s increased almost tenfold (967%) in the first quarter of 2020.

The sheer size of volumetric attacks has increased to overwhelming proportions. CloudFlare also reports that 500Mbps DDoS attacks have become the norm for volumetric attacks.

DDoS attacks are becoming more common. In 2021, ZDNet reported that DDoS attacks have increased by at least 154% over the past two years.

Attacks have become more sophisticated. Attackers have combined DDoS with other types of attacks, including ransomware.

DDoS attackers have adopted sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning methods to carry out their attacks. For example, DDoS botnets apply machine learning methods to perform sophisticated network reconnaissance to find the most vulnerable systems. They also use AI to reconfigure themselves to thwart detection and alter attack strategies. Modern attacks will likely manifest themselves as both defenders and attackers pitting AI-enabled systems against one another.

DDoS attackers use a mixed attack strategy. They combine various attack methods with social engineering, credential stealing and physical attacks, so that the actual DDoS attack is only one factor in a multi-faceted approach.

Tactical Warfare: How DDoS Attackers Avoid Detection

DDoS attacks are notoriously cunning, making them difficult to pin down. One of the reasons they are so slippery is because of the difficulty in identifying the origin. Threat actors generally employ three main tactics to carry out a DDoS attack:

1. Spoofing

By default, IPv4 and IPv6 are unable to authenticate and track traffic. For IPv4 networks in particular, it is quite easy to spoof source and destination addresses. DDoS attackers exploit this problem by forging packets with spoofed source addresses. As a result, it is possible for an attacker to trick legitimate devices into responding to these packets by sending millions of responses to a victim host that made no request at all.

2. Reflection

Attackers typically want to hide any trace of their involvement in a DDoS attack. To do this, they manipulate the default behavior of Internet services so that the services effectively hide the actual attacker. Services commonly used in this type of attack include thousands of DNS (Domain Name System), NTP (Network Time Protocol), and SNMP (Simple Network Management) servers. This is one of the main reasons why attackers are attracted to a DDoS strategy. Internet services not only provide the traffic, but also tend to make it difficult for defenders to trace the origin of the attack, since most servers do not keep detailed logs of the services they used.

3. Reinforcement

Amplification is a tactic that allows a DDoS attacker to use a source multiplier to generate a large amount of traffic that can then be directed to a victim host. Amplification attacks don’t use a botnet, it’s simply a tactic that allows an attacker to send a single spoofed packet, which then tricks a legitimate service into sending hundreds, if not thousands, of responses to a victim’s network or server.

It is very important to understand that DDoS attacks use normal internet processes to wreak havoc. These devices are not necessarily misconfigured, they are actually behaving the way they are supposed to behave. Attackers simply found a way to exploit and manipulate this behavior to perform their DDoS attack.

In addition, network devices and services often unknowingly become participants in a DDoS attack. These three tactics exploit the standard behavior of network resources worldwide. These resources include:

routers

Switch

firewalls

load balancer

caching server

Edge Network Devices

Cell towers (including 4G and 5G)

Battle Duration: How Long Do DDoS Attacks Last?

DDoS attacks vary widely in length and sophistication. A DDoS attack can take place over a long period of time or be quite brief:

Long-Term Attack: An attack carried out over a period of hours or days is considered a long-term attack. For example, the DDoS attack on AWS caused disruptions for three days before finally being mitigated.

An attack carried out over a period of hours or days is considered a sustained attack. For example, the DDoS attack on AWS caused disruptions for three days before finally being mitigated. Burst Attack: These DDoS attacks are carried out over a very short period of time, lasting only a minute or even a few seconds.

Do not be fooled. Although very fast, burst attacks can actually be extremely damaging. With the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and increasingly powerful computing devices, it is possible to generate more volume traffic than ever before. This allows attackers to generate a higher volume of traffic in a very short time. A burst DDoS attack is often beneficial to the attacker because it is more difficult to track down.

Technological Warfare: Botnets and DDoS Attacks

Botnets, which are huge computer networks, can be used for DDoS attacks. They usually consist of compromised computers (e.g. IoT devices, servers, workstations, routers, etc.) or zombies controlled by a central server.

Attackers don’t necessarily need a botnet to perform a DDoS attack. Threat actors can easily manipulate the tens of thousands of network devices on the Internet that are either misconfigured or behaving as intended.

Still, it’s important to understand how a botnet-based DDoS attack can occur.

A Sophisticated Digital Enemy: The Evolution of the DDoS Attack

One of the realities of cybersecurity is that most attackers are moderately talented individuals who have somehow figured out how to manipulate a specific network state or situation. Even if Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) and ever more sophisticated hackers are often discussed, the reality is often much more banal.

For example, most DDoS attackers simply find a specific protocol. They will discover that they can manipulate the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) handshake to create a flood attack of SYN packets or a specific server type, e.g. Memcached service is a legitimate service that is widely used to speed up web applications. Attackers have often exploited memcache implementations that are not properly secured, and even those that are working properly.

Attackers have also discovered that they can compromise IoT devices such as webcams or baby monitors. But today attackers have more help. Recent advances have resulted in AI and connectivity capabilities that have unprecedented potential. Like legitimate system administrators, attackers now have speech recognition, machine learning, and a digital roadmap that allows them to manipulate built-in devices in your home or office, such as B. smart thermostats, home appliances and home security systems.

Attack Plan: The Anatomy of a Botnet-Based DDoS Attack

DDoS traffic comes in many different forms. In the case of a botnet-based attack, the DDoS threat actor uses a botnet to coordinate the attack. Understanding the types of traffic helps select proactive measures to identify and mitigate it. Click the red plus signs to learn more about each type of DDoS traffic.

1. Command and Control (C&C) A botnet administrator or wrangler uses a central server or network of servers to control thousands of members of the botnet. Whenever a Wrangler issues a command to control the botnet, this is known as Command and Control (C&C) traffic. The actual administrator is usually far from the botnet or C&C server, and network traffic is usually spoofed, often making detection difficult. The C&C operator then issues commands to manipulate network services and devices to create the DDoS attack. 2. Coordination The most effective DDoS attacks are highly coordinated. The best analogy for a coordinated attack is to compare a DDoS botnet to a colony of fire ants. When a fire ant colony decides to attack, it first takes position and prepares to attack. They trade under a single instruction and with no apparent warning, wait for the signal and then act simultaneously. 3. Beaconing/Heartbeat Traffic Whenever a compromised system calls a C&C server, this is called beaconing. This traffic between a botnet member and its controller often exhibits specific, unique patterns and behaviors. As a result, there is a slim chance for security analysts to identify this traffic and treat it as a signature to prevent a DDoS attack. 4. Attack Traffic Layer 7: Many modern botnet-based DDoS attacks use HTTP deluges of GET and POST traffic to incapacitate organizational devices.

Many modern botnet-based DDoS attacks use HTTP floods of GET and POST traffic to disable organizational devices. Protocol-Based Attacks: As mentioned above, these attacks can involve the manipulation of various protocols, from TCP, UDP and ICMP.

As indicated above, these attacks can involve the manipulation of various protocols, from TCP, UDP and ICMP. Reinforced: DDoS attackers often use botnets to identify and attack Internet-based resources that can help generate massive amounts of traffic.

DDoS attackers often use botnets to identify and attack Internet-based resources that can help generate massive amounts of traffic. Reflected: Reflected attacks take place when the attacker uses a system or set of systems to effectively hide the origin. 5. Operational Technology (OT)/IoT OT: Attacks on OT involve physical objects that are assigned programming and an associated IP address. These can be devices that are used to control power grids, pipelines, cars, drones or robots.

Attacks on OT involve physical objects that are provided with programming and an IP address assigned to them. These can be devices that are used to control power grids, pipelines, cars, drones or robots. IoT: IoT devices contain individual systems that can communicate with each other or be integrated. Some examples are video doorbells, smart thermostats, smart clocks, IP-enabled lightbulbs, and printers. 6. Unusual Traffic Unusual traffic involves the use of strategies such as reflection and amplification, usually simultaneously. 7. Multi-Vector Modern DDoS attacks combine different attack strategies, including using Layer 7, volumetric, and even seemingly unrelated methods like ransomware and malware. In fact, these three attack types have become something of a trifecta and are becoming increasingly important in the world of DDoS attacks.

Assembling Weapons: Tools to understand how DDoS attacks work

DDoS attacks take many forms and are constantly evolving to include different attack strategies. It’s important for IT professionals to arm themselves with the knowledge of how attacks work.

There are three models that can help provide insight into the inner workings of DDoS attacks:

Lockheed Martin Cyber ​​Kill Chain: Used to provide a framework for attack strategies, this model outlines seven steps a hacker can take to launch a long-lasting DDoS attack. This model does not account for the use of botnets to compromise systems.

This model, used to provide a framework for attack strategies, outlines seven steps a hacker can take to launch a long-lasting DDoS attack. This model does not account for the use of botnets to compromise systems. Miter ATT&CK Model: This model represents real-world attacks and provides a knowledge base of known adversary tactics and techniques to help IT pros analyze and prevent future incidents. This model is particularly useful for people who want to defend against DDoS attacks, as it allows you to profile attackers and identify their strategies.

This model represents real-world attacks and provides a knowledge base of known adversary tactics and techniques to help IT pros analyze and prevent future incidents. This model is particularly useful for people who want to defend against DDoS attacks, as it allows you to profile attackers and identify their strategies. Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis: The Diamond model helps organizations balance an adversary’s capabilities versus the victim’s capabilities, as discussed in a CompTIA blog on the top three cybersecurity models. Although the Diamond model was developed to model actual attacks, it is also useful for identifying DDoS attacks.

As an IT professional, knowing how to deal with a DDoS attack is critical, as most organizations will have to deal with an attack of one type or another over time. Security analysts and threat hunters often use the ATT&CK model and the Miter ATT&CK Navigator to identify conditions that make DDoS attacks particularly successful.

A Brief History of Major Attacks: DDoS Examples

There have been a proliferation of distributed denial of service attacks over the years. Let’s start with a short list of the top DDoS attacks, what drives them, and the profound impact they are having on our digital world. Click the red plus signs to learn more about each of these major DDoS attacks.

1. Estonia: April 27, 2007 The DDoS attacks on Estonia came in response to the movement of a politically divisive monument to a military cemetery. For Russian-speaking Estonians, the statue represented Nazi liberation, but for ethnic Estonians, the monument symbolized Soviet oppression. Russian Estonians began to riot, and many were publicly outraged. During the week of April 27th, a spate of cyberattacks erupted, most of them DDoS-type. Individuals used ping floods and botnets to spam and take down many financial institutions, government agencies, and the media. This attack is considered one of the most sophisticated to date and is a solid example of a government DDoS attack. 2. Republic of Georgia: July 20, 2008 In 2008, the Republic of Georgia experienced a massive DDoS attack just a few weeks before it was attacked by Russia. The attack was apparently aimed at the President of Georgia and paralyzed several government websites. It was later believed that these attacks were an attempt to reduce efforts to communicate with sympathizers of Georgia. Not long after, Georgia fell to the Russian invasion. This attack is considered a textbook example of a coordinated cyberattack using physical warfare. It is being studied by cybersecurity experts and military groups worldwide to understand how digital attacks can be combined with physical efforts. 3. Spamhaus: March 18, 2013 The Spamhaus incident, infamously known as the “attack that nearly brought down the internet,” was the largest DDoS attack in the history of the Internet at the time. The attack was triggered when a group called Cyberbunk was blacklisted by Spamhaus. In retaliation, the group targeted the anti-spam organization, which curtailed its current spamming efforts with a DDoS attack that eventually grew to a 300 Gbps stream. The attack was so compromising that even Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company built to combat these attacks, was briefly crippled. 4. Occupy Central: June 2014 The DDoS attacks that took place during Occupy Central were an attempt to cripple the pro-democracy protests that took place in Hong Kong in 2014. Two independent news sites, Apple Daily and PopVote, were known to have published content in support of pro-democracy groups. Much larger than the Spamhaus attack, Occupy Central pushed data streams of 500 Gbps. This attack was able to evade detection by disguising junk packets as legitimate traffic. Many speculate that the attack was launched by the Chinese government to quell pro-democracy sentiment. 5. Dyn: October 21, 2016 A massive DDoS attack was launched against the DNS provider Dyn. The attack targeted the company’s servers via the Mirai botnet, destroying thousands of websites. This attack impacted stock prices and was a wake-up call for vulnerabilities in IoT devices. The Mirai botnet consisted of a collection of IoT-connected devices. The botnet was assembled by exploiting the default credentials on the IoT consumer devices, which were never changed by the end users. The attack impacted the services of 69 companies, including powerhouses like Amazon, CNN and Visa. 6. GitHub: February 28, 2018 One of the largest DDoS attacks in history was launched against GitHub, considered by many to be the most prominent developer platform. At the time, this was the largest DDoS attack in history. However, due to precautionary measures, the platform was only taken offline for a few minutes. Attackers spoofed GitHub’s IP address and gained access to Memcache instances to increase the volume of traffic directed to the platform. The organization quickly alerted support and traffic was routed through cleaning centers to limit the damage. GitHub was up and running again within 10 minutes. 7. Amazon Web Services (AWS): February 2020 AWS is known as a leading provider of cloud computing services. The company, a subsidiary of retail giant Amazon, suffered an impressive DDoS attack that kept its response teams busy for days. The DDoS attack on AWS, believed to be the largest of its kind to date, boasts an impressive rush of 2.3 Tbps, beating the previous leader of 1.7 Tbps. AWS teams countered the attack and eventually mitigated the threat after a three-day attack. 8. Google: September 2017 (reported October 2020) In a strange turn of events, Google reported a DDoS attack that outperformed the attack on Amazon and claimed it mitigated a 2.5 Tbps incident years earlier . The attack was launched by a state-sponsored group of cybercriminals from China and lasted six months. Google released the flood attack in late 2020 to draw attention to an increase in state-sponsored attacks. Die Organisation hat keinen Datenverlust aufgrund des Vorfalls angegeben, plant jedoch, die Präventivmaßnahmen zu verbessern, um den Anstieg der Angriffe zu vereiteln. 9. Sektorspezifische Angriffe: 2019-2021 In den letzten Jahren haben mehrere Sektoren steigende Raten von sektorspezifischen DDoS-Angriffen gemeldet, von der Fertigung und dem Einzelhandel bis hin zu Finanzinstituten und sogar Regierungen. Der Angriff auf die belgische Regierung im Mai 2021 betraf mehr als 200 Organisationen. Aber es wurde speziell entwickelt, um die Arbeit ihrer Regierung zu stören. DDoS-Angriffe auf bestimmte Sektoren können als politischer Dissens oder als Zeichen dafür verwendet werden, dass bestimmte Geschäftspraktiken oder -ideale nicht eingehalten werden.

Das Angreiferprofil: Wer führt DDoS-Angriffe durch?

Sie sehen oft Bilder von schändlichen Personen mit dunklen Kapuzen, um den böswilligen Bedrohungsakteur zu symbolisieren. In Wirklichkeit sind diese Angreifergruppen den Behörden oft gut bekannt und nutzen DDoS-Taktiken, um Einfluss zu gewinnen, Regierungs- und Militäroperationen zu stören oder Menschen dazu zu bringen, das Vertrauen in einen Marktsektor, eine Unternehmensmarke oder eine alteingesessene Institution zu verlieren.

Unabhängig von den Beweggründen, die hinter diesen Angriffen stehen, können Hacker leicht angeheuert werden, um beim Starten eines DDoS-Angriffs zu helfen – einfach als Waffen zum Mieten erhältlich. Einzelpersonen oder ganze kommerzielle Gruppen können im Dark Web angeheuert werden, oft unter einem Servicemodell, ähnlich dem von Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) oder Software as a Service (SaaS). Tatsächlich hat Radware im August 2020 eine globale Sicherheitswarnung als Reaktion auf die zunehmende Verbreitung von DDoS-for-Hire-Angriffen herausgegeben.

Was einen Angriff motiviert: Die Gründe für einen DDoS-Angriff

Um DDoS-Angriffe zu vereiteln, ist es wichtig zu verstehen, was den Vorfall antreibt. Während DDoS-Angriffe in Bezug auf Taktiken und Methoden sehr unterschiedlich sind, können DDoS-Angreifer auch eine Vielzahl von Motiven haben, darunter die folgenden.

Finanzielle Motive: DDoS-Angriffe werden oft mit Ransomware-Angriffen kombiniert. Der Angreifer sendet eine Nachricht, die das Opfer darüber informiert, dass der Angriff beendet wird, wenn das Opfer eine Gebühr zahlt. Diese Angreifer sind meistens Teil eines Syndikats der organisierten Kriminalität. Heutzutage können diese Syndikate jedoch nur ein Dutzend Personen mit Networking-Wissen und zusätzlicher Zeit umfassen. Manchmal führen konkurrierende Unternehmen sogar DDoS-Angriffe gegeneinander durch, um sich einen Wettbewerbsvorteil zu verschaffen.

DDoS-Angriffe werden oft mit Ransomware-Angriffen kombiniert. Der Angreifer sendet eine Nachricht, die das Opfer darüber informiert, dass der Angriff beendet wird, wenn das Opfer eine Gebühr zahlt. Diese Angreifer sind meistens Teil eines Syndikats der organisierten Kriminalität. Heutzutage können diese Syndikate jedoch nur ein Dutzend Personen mit Networking-Wissen und zusätzlicher Zeit umfassen. Manchmal führen konkurrierende Unternehmen sogar DDoS-Angriffe gegeneinander durch, um sich einen Wettbewerbsvorteil zu verschaffen. Ideologische Motive: Angriffe werden oft gestartet, um repressive Regierungsgremien oder Demonstranten in politischen Situationen ins Visier zu nehmen. Ein DDoS-Angriff dieser Art wird oft durchgeführt, um ein bestimmtes politisches Interesse oder Glaubenssystem, wie beispielsweise eine Religion, zu unterstützen.

Angriffe werden oft gestartet, um repressive Regierungsgremien oder Demonstranten in politischen Situationen ins Visier zu nehmen. Ein DDoS-Angriff dieser Art wird oft durchgeführt, um ein bestimmtes politisches Interesse oder Glaubenssystem, wie beispielsweise eine Religion, zu unterstützen. Staatlich geförderte Motive: DDoS-Angriffe werden oft durchgeführt, um Militärtruppen oder die Zivilbevölkerung zu verwirren, wenn politische Unruhen oder Meinungsverschiedenheiten offensichtlich werden.

DDoS-Angriffe werden oft durchgeführt, um Militärtruppen oder die Zivilbevölkerung zu verwirren, wenn politische Unruhen oder Meinungsverschiedenheiten offensichtlich werden. Taktische Motive: In diesem Fall wird der DDoS-Angriff im Rahmen einer größeren Kampagne durchgeführt. In einigen Fällen umfasst die Kampagne einen physischen Angriff oder eine andere Serie von softwarebasierten Angriffen. Beispielsweise ist bekannt, dass Militärs DDoS-Angriffe mit physischen Angriffen kombinieren. Taktische Angriffe werden verwendet, um die Aufmerksamkeit von normalen IT-Aufgaben abzulenken und sich ein anderes Ziel zunutze zu machen – den alten „Bait-and-Switch“-Cyberangriff.

In this case, the DDoS attack is waged as part of a larger campaign. In some cases, the campaign includes a physical attack or another series of software-based attacks. For example, militaries have been known to combine DDoS attacks with physical ones. Tactical attacks are used to divert attention away from normal IT tasks to take advantage of a different target – the old bait-and-switch cyberattack. Business/Economical Motives: DDoS attacks of this variety help to gather information or cause damage to particular industry sectors. For example, attacks on companies such as Sony, British Airways and Equifax caused consumers to lose faith in entire industries.

DDoS attacks of this variety help to gather information or cause damage to particular industry sectors. For example, attacks on companies such as Sony, British Airways and Equifax caused consumers to lose faith in entire industries. Extortion Motives: Other attacks are used to attain some personal or monetary gain through extorted means.

Missile Launched: Tools That Perform DDoS Attacks

Attackers use several devices to target organizations. These are some common tools used in DDoS attacks:

Services: These include Memcached (used to speed up database and web-based transactions), the DNS server, the NTP and the SNMP.

These include Memcached (used to speed up database and web-based transactions), the DNS server, the NTP and the SNMP. Network Devices: Network devices include items such as routers and switches.

Network devices include items such as routers and switches. Botnets: Collections of compromised systems commonly used in DDoS attacks.

Collections of compromised systems commonly used in DDoS attacks. IoT Devices: Weaknesses in connected devices can be exploited by cybercriminals, turning them into zombies. The infamous Mirai botnet was utilized to launch a series of attacks using unsecured baby monitors.

Weaknesses in connected devices can be exploited by cybercriminals, turning them into zombies. The infamous Mirai botnet was utilized to launch a series of attacks using unsecured baby monitors. AI: Artificial intelligence is being used by hackers to modify code during a DDoS attack automatically so the attack remains effective despite safeguards.

Artificial intelligence is being used by hackers to modify code during a DDoS attack automatically so the attack remains effective despite safeguards. Exploitation of Legacy Equipment: Older hardware is often exposed to more vulnerabilities and is routinely targeted and exploited.

The Role of Recon: Keeping Track of DDoS Attacks

DDoS attackers get more and more savvy every day. Attacks are expanding in size and duration, with no signs of slowing. Organizations need to keep a finger on the pulse of incidents to understand how susceptible they may be to a DDoS attack.

Here are some resources that can help you keep track of the latest DDoS attacks:

Target Identified: What Do DDoS Attackers Target the Most?

While organizations in any industry are vulnerable, these sectors are subject to DDoS attacks most often:

health care

government

Internet service providers (ISPs)

Cloud service providers

Eyes on the Enemy: Identifying DDoS Attacks

From a tactical DDoS mitigation standpoint, one of the primary skills you need to have is pattern recognition. Being able to spot repetitions that signify a DDoS attack is taking place is key, especially in the initial stages. Automated applications and AI are often used as helpers, but generally companies need a skilled IT professional to differentiate between legitimate traffic and a DDoS attack.

Workers often look for the following warning signs that a DDoS attack is taking place:

Reports from existing mitigation devices (e.g., load balancers, cloud-based services)

Customers report slow or unavailable service

Employees utilizing the same connection also experience issues with speed

Multiple connection requests come in from a specific IP address over a short amount of time

You receive a 503 service unavailable error when no maintenance is being performed

Ping requests to technology resources time out due to Time to Live (TTL) timeouts

Logs show an abnormally huge spike in traffic

Responding to a Threat: Response Techniques, Services and Strategies Used to Mitigate a DDoS Attack

DDoS mitigation is quite different than mitigating other cyberattacks, such as those originating from ransomware. DDoS attacks are generally mitigated by devices and services that have been enabled to handle these types of attacks. For example, today’s load balancers are sometimes able to handle DDoS attacks by identifying DDoS patterns and then taking action. Other devices can be used as intermediaries, including firewalls and dedicated scrubber appliances.

When trying to mitigate a DDoS attack, you want to focus on placing services and devices between your network and the systems being used to attack you. Because attackers generate DDoS traffic by exploiting legitimate network and internet behavior, any connected device or server is vulnerable to an attack because it isn’t recognized as malicious in nature. You must create an intermediate mitigation solution to respond to that attack instead. In a ransomware or malware attack, security professionals generally solve the problem by upgrading the software on end points or restoring from backup.

Acting on a Threat: 5 Steps for DDoS Attack Response

Typical steps for responding to a DDoS attack include:

1. Detection

Early detection is critical for defending against a DDoS attack. Look for warning signs, provided above, that you may be a target. DDoS detection may involve investigating the content of packets to detect Layer 7 and protocol-based attacks or utilizing rate-based measures to detect volumetric attacks. Rate-based detection is usually discussed first when it comes to DDoS attacks, but most effective DDoS attacks are not blocked using rate-based detection.

2. Filtering

A transparent filtering process helps to drop the unwanted traffic. This is done by installing effective rules on network devices to eliminate the DDoS traffic.

3. Diversion and redirection:

This step involves diverting traffic so that it doesn’t affect your critical resources. You can redirect DDoS traffic by sending it into a scrubbing center or other resource that acts as a sinkhole. It is typically recommended that you transparently communicate what is taking place so that employees and customers don’t need to change their behavior to accommodate slowness.

4. Forwarding and analysis:

Understanding where the DDoS attack originated is important. This knowledge can help you develop protocols to proactively protect against future attacks. While it may be tempting to try and kill off the botnet, it can create logistical problems and may result in legal ramifications. Generally, it is not recommended.

5. Alternate delivery

It is possible to use alternate resources that can almost instantaneously offer new content or open up new networking connections in the event of an attack.

One of the best ways to mitigate a DDoS attack is to respond as a team and collaborate during the incident response process. The steps outlined above can only be achieved through a combination of services, devices and individuals working together. For example, to mitigate Layer 7 DDoS attacks it is often necessary to do the following:

Detection: Organizations will use a combination of security analyst and penetration activities to identify Layer 7 attack patterns. A penetration tester generally simulates the DDoS attack, and the security analyst will listen carefully to identify unique characteristics.

Organizations will use a combination of security analyst and penetration activities to identify Layer 7 attack patterns. A penetration tester generally simulates the DDoS attack, and the security analyst will listen carefully to identify unique characteristics. Traffic filtering: Use scrubbing centers and services to help redirect and contain harmful traffic.

Use scrubbing centers and services to help redirect and contain harmful traffic. Layer 7 control: CAPTCHAs and cookie challenges are often used to determine if a network connection request is originating from a bot or legitimate user.

CAPTCHAs and cookie challenges are often used to determine if a network connection request is originating from a bot or legitimate user. Forwarding of packets to a security professional for further analysis: A security analyst will engage in pattern recognition activities and then recommend mitigation steps according to their findings.

A security analyst will engage in pattern recognition activities and then recommend mitigation steps according to their findings. Alternate delivery during a Layer 7 attack: Using a CDN (content delivery network) could help support additional uptime when your resources are combatting the attack. It is important to note that mitigation devices can experience problems. It may not be properly updated or configured, and can actually become part of the problem during a DDoS attack.

Limiting the Damage: DDoS Mitigation Techniques

Once you know you are facing a DDoS attack, it’s time for mitigation. Prepare for the fight!

Physical devices Managing physical devices during a DDoS attack has largely remained a separate category from other mitigation efforts. Often called appliances, physical devices are kept separate because DDoS patterns and traffic are so unique and difficult to properly identify. Even so, devices can be very effective for protecting small businesses from DDoS attacks. Cloud scrubbing devices Often called scrubbing centers, these services are inserted between the DDoS traffic and the victim network. They take traffic meant for a specific network and route it to a different location to isolate the damage away from its intended source. The scrubbing center cleans the data, only allowing legitimate business traffic to pass on to the destination. Examples of scrubbing services include those provided by Akamai, Radware and Cloudflare. Multiple internet service connections Because DDoS attacks often seek to overwhelm resources with traffic, businesses sometimes use multiple ISP connections. This makes it possible to switch from one to another if a single ISP becomes overwhelmed. Black hole This DDoS mitigation technique involves using a cloud service to implement a strategy known as a data sink. The service channels bogus packets and floods of traffic to the data sink, where they can do no harm. Content delivery network (CDN) This is a group of geographically distributed proxy servers and networks often used for DDoS mitigation. A CDN works as a single unit to provide content quickly via multiple backbone and WAN connections, thus distributing network load. If one network becomes flooded with DDoS traffic, the CDN can deliver content from another unaffected group of networks. Load balancing servers Generally deployed to manage legitimate traffic, load balancing servers can also be used to thwart DDoS attacks. IT pros can utilize these devices to deflect traffic away from certain resources when a DDoS attack is under way. Web application firewall (WAF) Used to filter and monitor HTTP traffic, WAFs are often used to help mitigate DDoS attacks and are commonly part of cloud-based services such as AWS, Azure or CloudFlare. While sometimes effective, a dedicated device or cloud-based scrubber is often recommended instead. A WAF focuses on filtering traffic to a specific web server or application. But a true DDoS attack focuses on network devices, thus denying services eventually meant for the web server, for example. Still, there are times when a WAF can be used in conjunction with additional services and devices to respond to a DDoS attack.

Almost all DDoS mitigation devices on the market use the same five mechanisms:

Unterschrift

Behavioral or SYN flood

Rate-based and geolocation: As mentioned above, this is not usually reliable.

Botnet detection/IP reputation lists: The success of using lists will vary depending on the quality of your lists.

Challenge and response

Weapons at the Ready: DDoS Mitigation Services

Hundreds of organizations provide devices and services intended to help you prevent or combat a DDoS attack. A small sample of these services and devices is shown below.

DDoS Mitigation Vendor Services Offered AWS Shield Offers protection against Layer 3 and Layer 4 attacks. Available to all customers at no extra charge. Additional protection for Layer 7 attacks is available for a fee. Neustar DDoS Protection Solutions include cloud-based, on-premise and hybrid protection completely focused on thwarting DDoS attacks. Cloudflare DDoS Protection Layer 3, 4 and 7 services for free, as well as more sophisticated DDoS protection services for a fee. Akamai A highly respected service for help against volumetric DDoS attacks. Akamai owns many sites around the world to help identify and filter traffic. AppTrana Focuses on Layer 7 as well as volumetric (Layer 3 and 4) DDoS traffic. Alibaba DDoS Specializes in mitigating volumetric attacks.

A Coordinated Defense: Best Practices for DDoS Response

Click the red plus signs for more details on the eight ways you can prepare for a DDoS attack.

1. Policy creation or alteration If you don’t have a defined security policy, then creating one is the first step. If your policy is older or hasn’t considered modern DDoS methods and issues, it’s time to make a few changes. 2. Identify critical services Business-critical services are those that would cause operational delays if affected. These might include systems such as database, web, commerce server, customer relationship management (CRM), custom programming, AI, machine learning, streaming and data collection, among others. It may also be necessary to outline all business-critical applications running on your web servers. You can then make decisions based on the sample matrix, located below. 3. CDN information backup Store mission-critical information in a CDN to allow your organization to reduce response and recovery time. 4. Multiple ISP connections Larger organizations will want to have multiple ISPs ready in case one becomes flooded with traffic or can’t provide an essential filtering service in time. As an alternate or complementary solution, you could also engage a third-party scrubbing service that filters out DDoS traffic. 5. Server and endpoint backup It is important to back up server resources, as well as workstations and other devices. 6. Risk analysis A DDoS preparation scheme will always identify the risk involved when specific resources become compromised. 7. Identify and assign responsibility The last thing an organization wants to do is assign responsibility for DDoS response during or after an actual attack. Assign responsibility before an attack happens. 8. Practice Similar to other areas of expertise, the best way to know how to respond to a DDoS attack is to practice. Schedule dedicated training sessions and practice combatting attacks in a controlled environment.

Training at the Ready: The Do’s and Don’ts of Responding to a DDoS Attack

When dealing with a DDoS attack, there are certain best practices that can help keep a situation under control. Observe these DDoS attack do’s and don’ts.

What to Do When Dealing with a DDoS Attack What NOT to Do When Dealing with a DDoS Attack Overcommunicate with management and other workers. Leadership needs to be informed and involved so that the necessary steps are taken to limit damage. Overcommunicate with the public. To limit damage to your brand’s reputation and ensure you have the attack contained, only provide necessary information to the public. Delegate tasks. A DDoS attack means all hands on deck. Enlist other IT pros to report back and follow up with quick updates. Assume that it is someone else’s responsibility to handle the attack. These attacks must be dealt with quickly, and waiting to hand off responsibility can cost valuable time. Focus on root-cause analysis. Uncovering the cause of the attack can be vital when attempting to slow the progression. Try to solve the problem alone. DDoS attacks can escalate very quickly. Enlisting others in your mitigation efforts will help curb the attack more quickly. Conduct mock exercises for DDoS attacks. This may involve planned or surprise exercises to properly educate IT pros, staff and management on response activities. Make the assumption that IT pros, staff or management know what to do during a DDoS attack. Without proper training, these attacks can be damaging, and many employees lack the practical skills to counteract the hack. Work with ISPs, cloud providers and other service providers to determine the costs related to the DDoS attack. Get a report from all providers. To move past the attack, you need to know exactly what you are dealing with and have documentation to illustrate it. Presume old reports are still valid. Any reports older than six months or that involve data from before a company merger or major business change should not be considered sound data.

A Formidable Strategy: DDoS Mitigation Matrix

With so many as-a-service options, it can be difficult to know which services to engage as part of an effective DDoS prevention strategy. This DDoS mitigation matrix should help you understand how to place your services appropriately.

Service Location Mitigation Tactic Web server Company server room Installed on the on-premise Web Application Firewall (WAF) Database server Public cloud Load balancer, cloud-based DDoS mitigation server Credit card-accepting commerce server Private cloud Load balancer, cloud-based DDoS mitigation server, alternate ISP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) hosts for end users Public cloud Cloud-based DDoS protection service, alternate ISP, Network infrastructure On-premise Multiple alternate ISPs, cloud scrubbing service

Your matrix would, of course, vary according to your business-critical resources. It’s also important to remember that outsourcing still requires internal support. If you purchase a costly mitigation device or service, you need someone in your organization with enough knowledge to configure and manage it.

There are times when it is useful to simply outsource for a skillset. But, with DDoS attacks and others, it is always best to have internal expertise. Otherwise, you may end up with a situation where an outsourced expert has made changes to your DDoS protection suite, but then moves on to another organization.

IT Pro Skills and Tools for DDoS Management

As an IT pro, you can take steps to help ready yourself for a DDoS attack. Check out the following skills and tools that can help you successfully manage an incident.

Attack Basics: The Skills You Need to Manage DDoS Attacks

Employers will want to know that you are armed with the skills necessary for combatting a DDoS attack. Adding these skills to your toolset will help illustrate your ability to thwart attacks.

Develop effective planning and management of products and applications.

Communicate clearly during a response.

Demonstrate ability to work with cloud and ISP providers to tackle difficult situations and troubleshoot problems.

Illustrate effectiveness in red teaming and blue teaming drills.

Proactively act as a threat hunter to identify potential threats and understand which systems are critical to business operations.

Standards such as the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-61 provide a helpful foundation for knowing how to respond to attacks of various types. The IT industry also uses the ISO/IEC 27035-1:2016 standard as a guideline for incident response procedures. As a general rule, organizations with a reputation for responding well to incidents tend to use such standards as helpful guidelines, rather than absolute rules to follow.

IT pros can also benefit from seeing demonstrations of attacks to learn how data behaves in particular situations. Take the time to view demonstrations of the following attacks:

ransomware

DDoS

Browser-based threats

DDoS Boot Camp: DDoS Education Options for IT Pros

Ongoing education is essential for any IT pro. Technology advances every day, and IT pros that stagnate will eventually be deemed unnecessary as legacy systems die off and new platforms take their place. To remain relevant, it’s important to continue educating yourself.

The standards and practices taught in the industry will also help you and your organization respond to DDoS attacks. One way to obtain the appropriate level of knowledge is to learn the standards and best practices covered by the IT certifications found in the CompTIA Cybersecurity Pathway.

Endpoints Cloud Servers Red Team Blue Team Network Security

Download the exam objectives for the above CompTIA exams to see what’s covered and decide which one is right for you.

Want to know more about DDoS attacks and stay up to date on the latest in cybersecurity? Subscribe to CompTIA’s IT Career News for weekly digests and a monthly newsletter dedicated to cybersecurity, cloud computing, computer networking, tech support and more.

Terms to Know ACK: Acknowledgement packet

Acknowledgement packet DNS: Domain Name System

Domain Name System HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol ICMP: Internet Control Message Protocol

Internet Control Message Protocol OSI/RM: Open Systems Interconnection/Reference Model

Open Systems Interconnection/Reference Model Incident response: Steps to take when managing a DDoS attack.

Steps to take when managing a DDoS attack. SYN: Synchronize packet

Synchronize packet SYN flood: Where an attacker manipulates the three-way TCP handshake to create a DDoS attack.

Where an attacker manipulates the three-way TCP handshake to create a DDoS attack. TCP: Transmission control protocol

Transmission control protocol TCP handshake: A three-step process that occurs whenever two computers communicate with each other at the beginning of a TCP session. Also known as the TCP three-way handshake.

A three-step process that occurs whenever two computers communicate with each other at the beginning of a TCP session. Also known as the TCP three-way handshake. UDP: User Datagram Protocol

5 Steps to DDoS Response Download CompTIA’s free Quick Response Guide to DDoS Attacks with tips and tricks for mitigation and response so you’re ready to protect your organization at a moment’s notice. Download the Guide

Read more about Cybersecurity.

The short answer is “until it stops”.

Afaik, there are no good stats on averages and intensities – most attacks are not reported publicly. As many have pointed out, the best, and probably only, option is to have an open discussion with your ISP and rely on their knowledge and experience.

Depending on the available tools and the skills of the administrators, you are usually offered various compromises between the accessibility of the site to the outside world and the effectiveness in filtering DDoS, which usually works well enough.

If this type of attack happens to you frequently or lasts longer than a few days, it may be worth investing in a better equipped ISP, or if you are far enough upstream to be responsible for your own DDoS protection, invest into better security tools and people.

What is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?

A denial of service (DoS) attack is a cyber attack on devices, information systems or other network resources that prevents authorized users from accessing expected services and resources. This is usually accomplished by flooding the target host or network with traffic until the target becomes unresponsive or crashes. DoS attacks can last from a few hours to many months, costing organizations time and money while their resources and services are unavailable.

KEY FINDINGS A denial of service (DoS) is a form of cyberattack that prevents legitimate users from accessing a computer or network.

In a DoS attack, rapid and continuous online requests are sent to a target server in order to overload the server’s bandwidth.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks use a vast network of computers or devices infected with malware to launch a coordinated stream of meaningless online requests and block legitimate access.

How Denial of Service Attacks Work

DoS attacks are on the rise as businesses and consumers use more and more digital platforms to communicate and do business with each other.

Cyberattacks are often launched to steal personally identifiable information (PII), causing significant damage to companies’ financial pockets and reputations. Data breaches can affect a specific company or a multitude of companies at the same time. A company with high-security protocols can be attacked by a member of its supply chain that has inadequate security measures in place. If multiple companies have been targeted for an attack, the perpetrators can use a DoS approach.

Cyber ​​attacks typically fall into one of three main categories: criminal, personal, or political. Criminal-motivated attacks are aimed at financial gain. Personal attacks can occur when a disgruntled current or former employee seeks revenge and steals money or data, or simply wants to disrupt a company’s systems. Sociopolitical attackers – also known as “hacktivists” – seek attention for their concerns.

In a DoS attack, the cyber attackers typically use an internet connection and device to send fast and continuous requests to a targeted server in order to overload the server’s bandwidth. DoS attackers exploit a software vulnerability in the system and proceed to exhaust the server’s memory or CPU.

The damage of a DoS attack caused by loss of service can be repaired in a short time by implementing a firewall with allow/deny rules. Since a DoS attack only has one IP address, the IP address can simply be fished out and further access denied via a firewall. However, there is one type of DoS attack that is not so easy to detect – a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

A common type of DoS attack is the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The attacker floods their target with unwanted web traffic, preventing normal traffic from reaching its intended destination. Hordes of infected, connected devices (e.g., smartphones, PCs, network servers, and Internet of Things devices) from around the world simultaneously attack a targeted website, network, web application, application programming interface, or data center infrastructure for traffic to block.

DoS and DDoS attacks can slow down or completely stop various online services including email, websites, e-commerce sites and other online resources.

The various sources of attack traffic can operate in the form of a botnet. A botnet is a network of private devices compromised by cybercriminals without the knowledge of the device owners.

The hackers infect the computers with malicious software to take control of the system and send spam and fake requests to other devices and servers. A target server that falls victim to a DDoS attack will be overloaded with fake traffic due to hundreds or thousands of attacks.

Since the server is attacked from multiple sources, detecting all addresses from these sources can be difficult. It can also prove impossible to separate legitimate traffic from fake traffic, which is another reason why it is difficult for a server to withstand a DDoS attack.

Why are DDoS attacks launched?

Unlike most cyber attacks, which are initiated to steal sensitive information, initial DDoS attacks are launched to make websites inaccessible to their users. However, some DDoS attacks serve as a front for other malicious acts. When servers are successfully taken down, perpetrators can go behind the scenes to dismantle websites’ firewalls or weaken their security codes for future attack plans.

A DDoS attack can also act as an attack on the digital supply chain. If the cyber attackers cannot penetrate the security systems of their multiple target websites, they can find a weak connection connected to all targets and attack the connection instead. If the connection is compromised, the primary targets would automatically be indirectly affected as well.

Cyber ​​vandals are always coming up with new ways to commit cybercrime, either for fun or for profit. It is imperative that any device that has access to the internet has security protocols in place to restrict access.

Example of a DDoS attack

In October 2016, a DDoS attack was launched against a Domain Name System (DNS) provider, Dyn. Think of a DNS as an Internet directory that directs your request or traffic to the intended website.

A company like Dyn hosts and manages the domain names of selected companies in this directory on its server. If Dyn’s server is compromised, so are the websites of the companies it hosts. The 2016 attack on Dyn flooded its servers with an overwhelming amount of web traffic, causing a massive internet outage and shutting down over 80 websites, including major sites like Twitter, Amazon, Spotify, Airbnb, PayPal, and Netflix.

It was found that some of the traffic came from a botnet created with malware called Mirai, which appeared to have infected more than 500,000 internet-connected devices. Unlike other botnets that capture private computers, this particular botnet gained control of easily accessible Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as DVRs, printers, and cameras. These weakly secured devices were then used for a DDoS attack by sending an insurmountable number of requests to Dyn’s servers.

What is a DoS attack? A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is a cyberattack that renders a computer or other device inaccessible to its intended users. This is usually achieved by overloading the target computer with requests until it can no longer handle normal traffic. In a DoS attack, a single computer launches the attack. This differs from a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where multiple systems simultaneously overwhelm a target system.

What is a DDoS attack? A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple systems overwhelm a target system’s bandwidth or resources. A DDoS attack uses various sources of attack traffic, often in the form of a botnet.

It’s no secret that the gambling industry has seen massive expansion over the past decade.

The Xbox Live community has grown 30% year over year for the past 36 months.

Additionally, you can now find esports live on ESPN, with winners winning millions (yes, millions) of dollars.

But in the ever-expanding landscape of online gaming, gamers are increasingly at risk for cyber attacks.

Throughout this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at a common internet attack that Xbox Live users have been experiencing lately, a DDOS attack.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s covered:

The definition of a DDOS attack

How DDOS Attacks Work (The Process)

How to Fix and Prevent DDOS Attacks

What is a DDOS attack?

Let’s start with the simplest question we can ask.

What is a DDOS attack?

A distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack is a type of attack designed to temporarily disable your website, network, IP address, or service.

The majority of victims of DDOS attacks claim that hackers chose them as targets to either blackmail them into paying a cryptocurrency ransom or simply to divert their attention to the attack while hackers installed malicious software and/or stole data.

Regarding Xbox users, DDOS attacks can also be used by cyber criminals to disrupt your internet service for up to 24 hours.

Many Xbox players say that the DDOS attacks are carried out by other players in retaliation – simply as a threat.

Because of this, it is important for Xbox players to know how these attacks work and how to prevent angry gamers/cyber criminals from disrupting their service.

How DDOS Attacks Ruin Your Xbox Gaming Experience

What exactly happens to players when a DDOS attack occurs?

A DDOS attack effectively leaves you unable to connect to your server, making it impossible to access Xbox Live.

The most notorious of the DDOS attacks on Xbox was carried out by Lizard Squad.

The Lizard Squad was a blackhat group of cybercriminals threatening attacks on multiple gaming platforms, affecting multiple Xbox players in December 2014.

In 2016, two of the four members were arrested as participants in a “DDOS for Hire” program.

How DDOS attacks work

To understand how to prevent attacks and make your Xbox experience as seamless as possible, you must first understand how a DDOS attack works.

In most cases, DDOS attacks are carried out on multiple computers.

Hackers compromise these computers and use them to attack websites, servers or specific services.

A DDOS attack sends traffic congestion to your server, rendering it inoperable.

A few terms to know before proceeding:

Bot – An autonomous program that can interact with users and systems. For the purpose of this article, a bot is a device that has been infected with malware, which allows it to be controlled and used by cyber criminals to perform or threaten DDOS attacks.

– An autonomous program that can interact with users and systems. For the purpose of this article, a bot is a device that has been infected with malware, which allows it to be controlled and used by cyber criminals to perform or threaten DDOS attacks. Botnet – A botnet is a collection of bots that hackers use to cause traffic overload on your server.

– A botnet is a collection of bots that hackers use to cause traffic congestion on your server. Script Kiddie – A novice hacker who isn’t particularly good at coding

Once the cyber criminal has successfully set up a botnet, they can send requests to any bot to send a wealth of information to your IP address.

The scary part is that using botnets is becoming more and more popular.

Even script kiddies can access a botnet for rent.

Because of the easy access, an attacker with little or no hacking experience can efficiently perform DDOS attacks.

So what happens during a DoS attack?

Once the information is sent to the IP address under attack, your network is confused between normal traffic and malicious bot network traffic.

All because, technically, all internet traffic should come from legitimate devices.

This overwhelms your system and causes it to shut down temporarily.

However, it’s important to note that these attacks often become chaotic and don’t last long.

This deters many malicious hackers looking to make money from denial of service attacks.

But you should still make sure you have the right security practices in place.

What to do when your Xbox suffers a DDOS attack

If you lose online multiplayer access, you should not automatically assume that you will be attacked.

Evidence of a DDOS attack usually requires a bit of digging to find.

The first diagnostic method is one we’ve all heard at some point, even from the least tech-savvy person in your family: Turn off the router.

You should do this for at least 10 minutes.

Why?

Because when your router is disabled, a botnet can no longer send network traffic to your IP address, eliminating the threat.

The next method you can try is to communicate with your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

An ISP can make it easy for you to find the root of the attack through the use of blackholing, scrubbing, traffic engineering, and local filtering, but that’s a story for another day.

The last option to troubleshoot your gaming platform is to simply contact the Microsoft Xbox support team.

It’s even better if you know the gamertag of the person performing the DOS attack.

You can report a user by pressing the Xbox button to find recent players, clicking on their profile, selecting “Report” and then “Tampering”.

A comment box will appear for you to fill in the comment box and block the user.

How to prevent a DDOS attack on Xbox

Now it’s time to discuss why you came here.

Below we have outlined some ways to strengthen your network security to stop DDOS attacks on your Xbox gaming platform.

A denial of service attack is a very dangerous thing for businesses, but honestly when it comes to an Xbox DOS attack, hackers are most likely targeting many members of the gaming community or the server itself rather than a single one Player.

Their leverage increases when they are able to shut down a large part of the system versus a select few players.

There’s not much you can do if an attacker hacks into the Microsoft system itself.

A multi-vector attack is more complex to solve. Luckily, it’s nothing for the average player to worry about.

You just have to wait, which usually doesn’t take long to solve.

But here are some precautions you should take to protect your Xbox from DDOS attacks.

The first thing you should do to protect yourself from DDOS is make sure you’ve updated your Xbox privacy settings. In order to do this:

1) Go to your gamertag;

2) Select “More Options”;

3) Then go to “Xbox Settings”;

4) Click on “Privacy and online safety”.

From there you can browse the options you want to change.

You should always try to keep your user profile in private mode.

This way you can be sure that a minimal amount of your personal data is visible on the platform to the entire player community.

Also, basic things like making sure your password is safe should be implemented for a smooth gaming experience.

2) Start using antivirus and firewall software

As always, you need to make sure you have antivirus and firewall software installed to combat threats from attacks on your network and device.

Neutralizing network security threats is the most important element in protecting against DDOS attacks.

It sounds simple, but many people phase out their protective instruments and forget to replace them.

This makes the work of a hacker much easier.

Cloud-based solutions are a good way to customize your antivirus to include distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Most standard network protectors only offer limited capacity to deal with DDOS attacks.

But with a cloud solution, additional layers of security are added, which are helpful in detecting network changes caused by DDOS breaches.

3) Use a VPN

Another way to stop a DDOS attacker is to hide your location.

DDOS hackers need a target.

Many gaming nerds know that some games require a local VPN to play.

But you can also use a VPN to fend off a DDOS attacker by spoofing your IP location.

This makes it harder for hackers to find you.

Many VPN services like SwitchVPN offer thousands of IP addresses to eliminate the possibility of a DDOS attack.

All you have to do is get an IP address from another country and you can easily mitigate the potential for such a cyber attack.

pack things

We hope we have answered all your questions about how to prevent DDOS attacks on your Microsoft Xbox platform.

Now you can keep playing with peace of mind and don’t have to worry about a botnet ruining your gaming experience or hacking into your network or apps and stealing your valuable data.

Whether you’re using a PC or a gaming console, you shouldn’t have to worry about your IP address getting hacked or your PC getting contaminated.

That’s why we wrote this article to show you the best security practices for your network to prevent IP attacks.

In summary, here are the points to take away from this article:

A DDOS attack on your Xbox aims to overload your IP address and temporarily shut it down, preventing you from connecting to the Internet on Xbox Live

Cyber ​​criminals use a botnet to disrupt your network’s Internet services

Shutting down your internet router prevents botnets from sending information to your IP address

Communicating with your ISP is an important way to find the intruder

You can contact Microsoft support team to report hackers

It is better to keep your profile in private mode

You can fake your IP address with a VPN to hide your location from hackers and protect yourself from DoS attacks once and for all

Stay protected!

hacker group

Lizard Squad was a black hat hacking group best known for their claims of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks[1] primarily intended to disrupt gaming-related services.

On September 3, 2014, Lizard Squad apparently announced it had disbanded[2] only to return later, and claimed responsibility for a variety of attacks on prominent websites. The organization once participated in and co-hosted with the Darkode hacking forums.[3][4]

On April 30, 2016, Cloudflare published a blog post detailing how cybercriminals using the group’s name sent out random threats to perform DDoS attacks, although Cloudflare claims that despite these threats, they did not perform a single attack .[5][6] As a result, the City of London Police issued an alert warning companies not to comply with ransom demands that threatened DDoS attacks.[7][8]

Distributed denial of service attacks

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack occurs when numerous systems overwhelm the bandwidth or resources of a target system, typically one or more web servers.[9] Such an attack is often the result of multiple systems (e.g. a botnet) flooding the target system with traffic. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted.

Notable Actions

League of Legends DDoS

On August 18, 2014, servers of the League of Legends game were taken offline with a DDoS attack; This was claimed as the first Lizard Squad attack.

Destiny DDoS

On November 23, 2014, Lizard Squad claimed they had attacked Destiny servers with a DDoS attack.[11]

PlayStation Network DDoS

On August 24, 2014, the PlayStation Network was disrupted by a DDoS attack, and again on December 8, when Lizard Squad took charge.[12][13][14]

Xbox Live DDoS

On December 1, 2014, Xbox Live was apparently attacked by Lizard Squad: users attempting to connect to use the service received error code 80151909.[15]

The Machinima Hack

On December 2, 2014, Lizard Squad hacked Machinima.com and replaced their front page with ASCII art of their logo.[16]

North Korea DDoS

On December 22, 2014, the Internet in North Korea was taken offline by a DDoS attack.[17] Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attack and connected to an IP address located in North Korea.[18] North Korean internet services were restored on December 23, 2014.[19]

Christmas Attacks

Lizard Squad had previously threatened to shut down gambling services at Christmas.[20]

On December 25, 2014 (Christmas Day), Lizard Squad claimed to have conducted a DDoS attack on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. On December 26, 2014 at 02:00 [when?], Lizard Squad appeared to end their attacks on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Gizmodo reported that the attacks may have stopped after Kim offered dotcom Lizard Squad 3000 accounts on its upload service MEGA.[21]

Tor Sybil Attack

On December 26, 2014, a Sybil attack was attempted on the Tor network involving more than 3000 relays.[22] Nodes whose names began with “LizardNSA” emerged, Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for this attack.[23]

The relevance of the attack has been questioned. According to Thomas White, operator of the Tor relay node, the consensus system resulted in Lizard Squad only managing to control “0.2743% of the network, which equates to a tiny VPS.”[24]

Attack on Malaysia Airlines website

On January 26, 2015, Malaysia Airlines’ website was attacked, apparently by the Lizard Squad, who described themselves as the “cyber caliphate”. Users were redirected to another page which featured an image of a lizard in a tuxedo and read “Hacked by Cyber ​​Caliphate.” Below that was text that read “Follow the Cyber ​​Caliphate on Twitter,” followed by the Twitter accounts of UMG’s owner, “@UMGRobert,” and UMG’s CEO, “@UMG_Chris.” The page also carried the headline “404 – Plane not found,” an apparent reference to the airline’s loss of flight MH370 the previous year. Malaysia Airlines assured customers and customers that customer data had not been compromised.[25]

According to media reports around the world, versions of the takeover in some regions included the phrase “ISIS will prevail,” citing concerns about Lizard Squad’s connection to Islamic State.[25]

Daybreak Games DDoS

On July 9, 2015, game servers operated by Daybreak Game Company, including those of H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2, were disrupted by a DDoS attack for which Lizard Squad claimed responsibility.[26][27] The attack came in retaliation for legal threats made by the company’s CEO, John Smedley, after he was attacked by the hacking group.[28]

False Claims

bomb threats

On August 24, 2014, Lizard Squad alleged that a plane in which Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley was flying (American Airlines Flight 362) had explosives on board. The flight from Dallas to San Diego made an unscheduled landing in Phoenix, Arizona. Sony Online Entertainment announced that the FBI is investigating the incident.[30]

Attacks from Facebook, Instagram and Tinder

On January 26, 2015, several social media services including Facebook and Instagram were unavailable to users. Tinder and HipChat were also affected. Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks via a post on a Twitter account previously used by the group.[31] The outage, initially speculated to be a distributed denial of service attack, lasted a little under an hour before services were restored.[32]

Facebook later released a statement saying its own engineers were to blame and that the disruption to its services was not the result of a third-party attack, but instead occurred after they made a change that affected their configuration systems have.[33]

Explicit celebrity photos

On January 27, 2015, Lizard Squad claimed to have compromised Taylor Swift’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. After claiming access, they threatened to release nude photos in exchange for bitcoins. However, Taylor Swift countered that “there were no nude photos” and urged the perpetrators to “have fun” in finding some.[34]

conspiracy theory

On Jan. 4, 2021, American attorney and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood tweeted unsubstantiated claims that a group of hackers called “The Lizard Squad” had evidence of a global sex ring involving several high-profile Americans, similar to the discredited Qanon conspiracy theory. [35] There appears to be no connection between the “Lizard Squad” mentioned by Wood and the black hat hacking group Lizard Squad, and Lizard Squad member Vinnie Omari denies any claim that his group has information about could have a worldwide sex affair. human trafficking organization. [36]

Known Members

Vinnie Omari

Vinnie Omari is a member of the Lizard Squad charged with the alleged offenses of trespassing/involvement in acquisition/retention/use or control of criminal property, fraud by misrepresentation – Fraud Act 2006, conspiracy to steal from others, unauthorized computer access with intent to commit other crimes”. He was used as a public face on television and as a news announcer to represent LizardSquad.

Julius Kivimäki

Julius Kivimäki (zeekill) is a Finnish member of the Lizard Squad convicted of over 50,000 computer crime counts as of July 2015.[39]

Zachary Buchta

19-year-old Zachary Buchta (fbiarelosers), from Maryland, has been charged with computer crimes related to a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, stolen credit cards and the sale of DDoS services. He was one of the members behind LizardSquad and also the co-group “PoodleCorp” which launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against several networks, YouTubers and gaming services. Buchta hid behind the Twitter aliases @fbiarelosers, @xotehpoodle and the online aliases “pein” and “lizard”.[40][41][42][43]

Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy

19-year-old Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy (UchihaLS), from the Netherlands, has been convicted of computer crimes related to a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, stolen credit cards, and selling DDoS-for-hire services accused . He was one of the members behind LizardSquad, which was primarily responsible for the DDoS attacks announced by the group. He was also one of the two managers behind the @LizardLands Twitter account, which has been the main LizardSquad Twitter account since January 2015. He usually hid behind his Twitter alias @UchihaLS (which stands for Uchiha LizardSquad) and online aliases “UchihaLS”. , “Uchiha” and “Dragon”.[40][41][42][43]