Hacks happen. That’s part of the online world nowadays. Prevention is the best defence, but if a hacker gets through, you need to know how to fight back.
At CMS Live, we know how to stop sophisticated attacks. Earlier this year, we fought off a 48-hour Layer 7 DDOS worldwide botnet attack on one of our hosted websites.
Initially, the problem seemed basic. A layer 3 & 4 DDOS attack was flagged as it tried to overwhelm the firewall, server hardware, and OS. But as the network system admins started to rate-limit requests, the attack quickly turned into a Layer 7 DDOS attack. Thousands of single URL requests came from unique IPs, ASNs, and countries.
Defending Against An Intelligent Enemy
After six hours, the botnet increased its payload. We had to rethink our strategy. The Cisco hardware firewall was becoming saturated due to heavy traffic. So, we temporarily re-routed to a new IP address for our customer’s URL. This botnet was smart. Within sixty minutes, it discovered our new IP and followed us, using real-time DNS lookups and more simultaneous requests.
We needed specific DDOS protection on a larger scale. After re-routing the DNS through the DDOS platform, we saw how severe the attack was. The platform handled over 1.2 billion requests and over 5.47TB in bandwidth in under 24 hours.
The botnet DDOS lasted almost 48 hours, which is rare. Most botnets are active for 15 to 30 minutes. This is usually enough time to take a website offline or slow it down. A two-day blitz showed an unusually determined hack.
Once the advanced DDOS protection was in place, we continued business as usual. The server operated under normal load. Visitors and customers didn’t notice any trouble. We were hit with over 1.2 billion web requests and over 5.5TB of bandwidth. Thanks to the advanced DDOS protection, the website’s user experience and integrity were never compromised. Nobody was in danger.
Botnet attacks are on the rise because hiring hackers is cheap. But with a knowledgeable defence team, your website will stay safe. No matter how intelligent the DDOS attack is.
