What is a DDoS Attack and How Does It Happen?

The era we live in is called the cyber, technology or internet age. This being the case, primitive actions such as violence and attack also appear in their versions in the cyber world. One of the most common and effective of these attacks is DDoS attacks. Alright, What is a DDoS attack? What does it do and why is it so common?

To put it briefly DDoS attack, planned to render a website server inoperable It is a cyber attack. These attacks are so well planned that sometimes even the server under attack cannot immediately understand the situation.

What is a DDoS attack?

Distributed Denial of Service, or simply DDoS attack; from many different sources focusing on a single goal, It is a type of cyber attack that aims to disrupt the traffic flow of the target server, network or service. Data such as the number of requests and the number of users that each system will receive are predetermined. DDoS attacks are these predetermined well over capacity It sends requests to the server, causing it to not process properly or even crash as the attack continues.

To give an example; 100 people boarding a 10-person minibus or trying to get on, can be thought of as a vehicle that is going to go from a side road to a main road and cannot proceed due to being exposed to abnormal traffic. In other words, targets are forced to serve beyond their capacity and as a result, they are out of service.

What does a DDoS attack do?

Although it is one of the types of malicious attacks, experts give credit to the DDoS attack and say it is the most dangerous attack ever designed. One of the most successful types of cyber attacks They say it is. Because it attacks a point that many people don't think about, the point of accessibility.

If there is an attack aimed at directly hijacking or redirecting the IP address to another point, it will be caught in the server's firewall and the attack can be terminated as soon as it started. However, visitors to the site with organic users mask The incoming attack manages to remain hidden until it takes effect.

This is what makes DDoS attacks effective. The server's firewalls do not understand the attack. This is not an attack but a website. What if it suddenly became popular? This also makes it difficult to counter the attack and take precautions.

How does a DDoS attack occur?

DDoS attacks, defined as attacks from many different sources directed at a single target, are of course not carried out by thousands of people. by a single person or group seized computers, During the attack, they are directed to a single target remotely. 

If you are not careful, any user's computer can become a target of a DDoS attack. The system is simple; to your computer as a result of carelessness. a malware It is transmitted. This software, secretly hidden on your computer, starts working during a DDoS attack and directs your computer to the target.

The power of the DDoS attack comes from these organic users. Maybe thousands of computers seized organic visitors is visiting the website. As a result of intense demand, servers lose their accessibility and may even be completely out of service depending on the strength of the attack. 

What is targeted with a DDoS attack?

• Layer 7 Attack: Attacks the layer that responds to HTTP requests and consumes the attack target's resources.
• HTTP Flood: Floods the server with HTTP requests far beyond capacity and results in a denial of service.
• State Exhaustion Attack: Web application server, firewall, It attacks intermediate layers such as load balancers and results in service interruption.
• SYN Flood: A service disruption occurs when repeatedly sending SYN requests, that is, the first connection request, and no request reaches a result.
• Volumetric Attack: Between the target server and the internet network attacks the link and results in bandwidth exhaustion.
• DNS Amplification: A DNS server is created where the target IP address receives a response with an unusual amount of data, resulting in the IP address being out of service. 

DDoS attacks basically aim to prevent the accessibility of the target server and are done in the same way. However, these cyber attacks also have some subtypes. subgenres The reason why this occurs is that each attack tries to achieve results by reaching another layer of the network.

What is being done against DDoS attacks?

Of course, at this point there are many technical details that only experts in the field can master. But the precautions taken against DDoS attacks controlling water after flood You can think like this. Although the attack power is not reduced, it is directed to a different point. With a measure called black hole redirection, requests that overwhelm the website's server are not stopped, but a created into black hole is directed. Thus, the server tries to overcome the attack without taking any damage.

It will be taken within a certain time interval with the rate limiting method. The number of requests is limited. It comes with a firewall called WAF. requests are filtered and every request is blocked from reaching the server. The aim of both methods is to minimize the possibility of possible attacks without missing requests that may be organic. 

With the Anycast network propagation method, the power of incoming attacks is reduced before they reach the server. flowing rapidly channels opening on the sides of the river You can think like this. As a result, since the attack sources are multiple, it cannot be stopped and therefore only the attack is prevented from reaching the server directly or its power is reduced.

We answered frequently asked questions such as what a DDoS attack is, what it does, what is done during an attack, and explained the details on the subject. your computer in a future Victim of DDoS attack If you don't want this to happen, protect your computer from malware with a powerful antivirus program.