DDOS stands for Distributed Denial-Of-Service.
How does it work?
The simplest way to explain DDOS attacks is to compare them to traffic jams.
There are different types of attack that target different elements of the normal client-server communication.
HTTP Flood Attacksare done by essentially refreshing a net web client page over and over except millions of times.
Defenses include having backup servers, and enough capacity to handle request overflows.
Doing so causes the web program to stop responding.
Volumetric Attackstry to artificially create congestion by specifically occupying all the bandwidth that a server has.
Botnets are usually used to carry out these attacks they also often use DNS amplification.
How to defend against DDOS attacks?
The first step to dealing with these attacks is to confirm that they are really happening.
Other routines to mitigate DDOS attacks are black holes, rate limiting and firewalls.
This can be done in preparation of an expected attack, for example.
Good firewalls are also able to quickly set up custom responses to attacks as they happen.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution!
