To ensure that your business is available to connected users and customers, it is necessary to provide a page that is efficient, hosted by a quality service and that can deliver your services and products to consumers. And it is precisely in this aspect that DDoS attacks usually act.
Maintaining your own website requires a lot of investment and dedication on the part of the company. Dealing with the slowness of your page can be a real shock, especially when the company followed all the steps and took care of every detail so that the site was made available with quality to all users and consumers.
Suddenly, your website becomes unavailable or extremely slow, and few customers can access your services and products. This problem can last just a few minutes or even days , causing a huge impact on your business and profitability.
For this reason, it is very important to know how DDoS attacks work and what are the best ways to deal with this and other types of cyber threats . To help you, we have prepared a complete article on the subject, with important and relevant information so that you can deal with this type of threat more efficiently.
What is a DDoS attack?
DoS is the acronym for Distributed Denial of Service, which roughly translated would be “distributed denial of service”. In this sense, the DDoS attack is a derivation of this threat. While the DoS attack involves only one attacker, which can be a server, computer or user, the DDoS attack is made up of a set of many DoS attacks. Understand the difference between them better with this video:
With more computers or servers executing the attack, it becomes more effective, causing even more drastic consequences for the victim . Using several computers to send massive requests to the same website , server or service. In this way, the attack manages to make access extremely slow or unavailable.
In this type of attack, there is no contamination of computers with viruses and malware or damage to files. Simply put, it consists of the overload that makes your website or server slow and even inaccessible. To make this possible, cybercriminals use several infected computers called botnets.
Commanded only by the cybercriminal, through this attack it is possible to direct these computers to just one network or server, sending multiple requests. Due to this excess of attempts, legitimate users end up being unable to access the page, causing enormous losses for the company.
Because it is not an attack that involves the contamination of computers, the DDoS attack can often be underestimated. However, imagine the impact that the unavailability of services can have on a large retail chain, for example. The company will suffer a major loss in sales, loss of return on investment in its marketing campaigns, drop in profitability and market positioning, etc.
In the first half of 2022 alone there was a 75.6% increase in DDoS attacks , compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching the frightening number of 6,019,888 attacks.
Taking this into consideration, DDoS attacks should never be underestimated. This type of attack has already victimized organizations of different types, such as: hospitals, government agencies, large retail companies, e-commerces, and many others .
How does this type of attack work?
The DDoS attack starts long before its application. To make this possible, cybercriminals infect several computers and machines, transforming them into botnets (infected computers that can be controlled by cybercriminals). These computers are used to send the multiple requests that make the DDoS attack effective.
With this, we can calculate that the more infected computers the cybercriminal uses, the greater the efficiency of the attack and, consequently, the damage caused by it.
Over the years , DDoS has become one of the main threats to the digital security of companies and organizations of all types . Due to the problems it can cause for a business, efficient tools have been developed that help companies identify and mitigate this type of attack.
See what are the main types of DDoS attacks that are being applied today:
What problems can this type of attack cause for your company?
Many managers wonder about the real need to protect themselves against a DDoS attack, after all, it is a temporary attack that, unlike other types of cyber attacks , is not intended to corrupt data or steal confidential information. However, cybercriminals do not usually carry out a DDoS attack on days with low user traffic.
Taking advantage of the vulnerability of the business and the greater chance of negotiation (when along with the attack the cybercriminal also makes an extortion attempt ), DDoS attacks are usually applied at times of high traffic such as Black Friday , end of year campaigns, or others important dates for the company. In this way, it is applied to cause the greatest possible impact on the victim , especially in terms of loss of profitability and damage caused to the company's image.
A company that operates solely digitally depends on the availability of its website and pages to remain active. That said, attacking the availability of your services is attacking the continuity of your business .
Financial losses
A large company that is attacked during a period of high sales and access may suffer substantial losses resulting from a DDoS attack. When this attack targets financial institutions, for example, the consequences can be numerous:
- Its users may be unable to carry out important operations;
- Extreme slowness during transfers;
- Inability to pay bills;
- Leakage of confidential data , such as bank statements, credit card information, access passwords, etc.;
- Damage to the institution’s image in the market and consumers;
- Among many other problems.
Regardless of the size and type of company or organization, the unavailability of services can have a major impact on profitability . Suppose a medium-sized e-commerce suffers an attack of this type precisely during the campaign that is most relevant to its annual profitability.
Even if there is no contamination of the devices, no demand for ransom for stolen data or leakage of confidential information, the company will suffer a major impact due to sales of products and services that stopped happening while the attack was being carried out.
Recovery after attack
A DDos attack is very expensive for the cybercriminal and when it is not successful, it cannot be profitable for those who carry it out. In extreme cases, the outage may take days before it can be recovered.
Once your services have been unavailable for a certain period of time, it is impossible to resume sales that stopped happening. After the attack, it is necessary to inform users about the return of activities and look for tools that help prevent new threats.
It is important that the company carries out intense work to rebuild its image in the market (depending on how long services are unavailable) and recover lost customers.
Damage to the company's image
DDoS attacks are not just a major threat to large retailers, financial institutions, government agencies or service providers. Many companies rely on business-critical applications such as sales automation, emails and CRM tools.
For this reason, it is important that, regardless of the field of activity of your business, you have a DDoS mitigation tool. When successful , this type of attack can have a major impact on the company's image , especially in terms of the reliability of its customers and consumers.
Your brand could be damaged in the market, making consumers think twice before trying to use your services again. Another loss that is little commented on, but very relevant to this type of attack, is that if your company has suffered an effective DDoS attack, it is a clear sign that it is vulnerable, that is : new cyber attacks will come and probably with a greater force. even bigger.
Interruption of activities
Disruption of activity is the first sign that a DDoS attack is in action . Depending on your flow of attacks, it is not always noticed immediately after it starts. Often, the interruption of services began long before and the company is already suffering from the consequences of the DDoS attack, so the loss can be even greater.
When a website is unavailable to users, it results in a Gateway error, which can harm its positioning in the rankings of the main search engines , such as Google. Therefore, even after recovering from the attack, your company will still suffer losses resulting from this action.
Big DDoS Attacks of 2021
In 2022, there were major cases of DDoS attacks. Some with enough relevance to involve governments and large security teams. See the main ones below:
Attacks during the Russia x Ukraine war
During the recent war in Ukraine, a veritable IT army was formed, carrying out DDoS attacks against the main resources and services provided by Russia. The objective is to make services unavailable and cause major disruption to the country.
REvil group attacks
This group, which has already been responsible for other large-scale DDoS attacks, began sending ransom warning notes before the attack even began, charging victims a substantial amount so that the attack would not happen. This is the same group that caused the interruption of the activities of the JBS group in Brazil. Earlier this year, some members of the group were detained in Poland.
Attacks on countries that demonstrated in the war
Several countries suffered DDoS attacks due to the global political situation, such as:
- Russia has seen an almost three-fold increase in DDoS attacks since declaring the start of the conflict with Ukraine;
- North American satellite telecommunications providers have seen an increase in high-impact attacks after beginning support for Ukraine's communications infrastructure;
- Ireland also saw a sudden increase in DDoS attacks after providing services to organizations in Ukraine;
What is the best way to protect yourself?
There are some actions and strategies that can be applied to prevent your company from suffering a DDoS attack, such as:
1 – Bandwidth: if your company has a lot of bandwidth in the connection, it is more difficult to be a victim of a DDoS attack. This is because it is prepared to handle a large volume of requests , not being affected by low-impact attacks and reducing the damage caused by stronger attacks.
2 – Count on a backup connection: it is a smart strategy to have a backup connection and a set of different IPs for your critical users. This way , the company can count on an alternative path when the primary network is overloaded with an excess of false requests that are sent by Cybercriminals.
3 – Learn to identify DDoS attacks: the sooner the problem is noticed, the less impact it will cause. Therefore, it is important that the company has a traffic monitoring system on its networks. The DDoS attack is one of the most common cyber attacks today, and there are already tools that can automatically identify unusual access patterns , so when there is a sudden increase in users, those responsible can be notified, helping to identify a DDoS attack ongoing.
4 – Use a protection tool: there are several tools on the market that help you protect yourself against DDoS attacks. They can identify and stop ongoing attacks , using tools aimed at diverting traffic and blocking malicious IPs. Below are some of the most used tools today:
- Fastnetmon : is an easy-to-use tool, functioning as a high-performance DoS/DDoS load analyzer. It has several packet capture mechanisms to quickly identify a DDoS attack.
- Anti-DDoS from service operators: companies such as Oi , Vivo and Embratel have anti-DDoS solutions aimed at companies, with the advantage of being available in Portuguese.
- Cloudflare: delivering simplified solutions to users, Cloudflare has an Anti-DDoS tool that helps to identify and mitigate these attacks efficiently.
Remember that there are different types of attacks , not just DDoS, and that new ways of obtaining data, information and access from companies and users on the internet are constantly being created.
Simple and free protection systems today certainly do not make sense for companies , considering the levels of protection and also the LGPD sanctions , which in some cases the fine can be millions of dollars.
I hope this text helps you and your company implement an efficient DDoS protection system.
Until later!
