DDoS Attacks: What You need to Know to Prevent Website Downtime in 2015

When Sony's Playstation network and Xbox Live's network went down this past holiday season, many a gamer who needed those services to play the games they had received for Christmas were very disappointed to find a DDoS attack was preventing them from doing so. DDoS attacks are nothing new, and everyone knows they are synonymous with website and server downtime. The question is, in a day and age where new technologies allow us to prevent such attacks, why are they still so prevalent? To prevent DDoS attacks in 2015, it will take a "village" approach to cleaning up the Web, and that means doing your part to secure your UDP service.

Hitting DDoS Attacks Where They Hurt

Many of the DDoS attacks that target servers, networks, and websites rely on spoofing source IPs to an open UDP service such as a DNS service or NTP service, etc. This responds with traffic that is much higher than what the target can handle, bringing the service down. Because some protocols allow hackers to activate a response that is hundreds of times larger than that of the actual request, it makes it very easy for someone with high-speed connection to launch a significant DDOS attack at a victim's site.

So what can you do to play your part in shutting down DDoS attacks of this nature? First, make sure you aren't running an open UDP service unless you absolutely have to (and there is little to no reason to have to use an open UDP service). Doing this usually involves a few minor tweaks and configuration changes. If you do indeed need to run open services to the Internet, be sure to use rate-limiting to prevent the service from being abused by hackers for DDoS purposes.

Making 2015 the Year the Internet Cracked Down on DDoS Attacks

If everyone does their part to secure their own corner of the Internet, it will become much harder for these low-level DDoS attacks to be launched successfully. Make sure you do your part to prevent such attacks by avoiding the use of open UDP services.