Corporate networks are constantly under siege. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are popular because they are simple to deploy, effective, and inexpensive. But when bad actors have the power to knock enterprise networks offline, companies are at risk of more than just inconvenience.
Apposite’s DDoS Storm can be your very own DDoS Tester. Thwart attacks, test network capabilities, and more.
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What Is a DDoS Attack?
As companies rely more and more on networks to complete work and serve customers, potential vulnerabilities are exposed. Hacking is a lucrative industry for criminals, and DDoS attacks are an increasingly popular tactic. In fact, use of DDoS attacks has been rising by more than 100% annually, according to Nexusguard.
These assaults disrupt servers, services, or enterprise networks, usually by overwhelming them with a flood of bogus internet traffic (usually attacking layers 2 to 7 of your network). Typically, the attacker uses a network of compromised computers, known as botnets, to generate and send a massive volume of traffic toward the target all at once.
A botnet is a network of computers or other intelligent devices infected with malicious software. Hackers spread this code by various means, like through phishing emails, malicious websites, infected files, or exploiting software vulnerabilities. After a device is compromised, it connects to a central command and control server operated by the attacker. The botmaster remotely controls the infected devices so they carry out various malicious activities without the knowledge or consent of the device owners.
To initiate a DDoS attack, a botmaster activates hundreds or thousands of computers, all targeted at a specific site. This traffic typically consumes the victim’s bandwidth, processing capacity, or other critical resources, rendering the technology infrastructure inaccessible to legitimate users.
Types of DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks come in various forms:
- Volumetric Attacks flood a target device (like a server or router) with a large amount of traffic.
- Protocol Attacks exploit weaknesses in network protocols to consume server resources.
- Application-layer Attacks enter through the upper network levels and wreak havoc.
How Long Does a DDoS Attack Last?
If the criminal’s goal is to keep the network offline as long as possible, the attack may last for a very long time and may be difficult to stop.
At other times, they may use DDoS attacks to create a smoke screen to divert resources and attention away from real goals (like malware insertion or data exfiltration). In this case, the attack may be abnormally short or strangely easy to defend against.
DDoS attacks can also be a key element in a multi-vector “triple extortion ransomware”, an assault aimed at gaining control of corporate technology assets and then squeezing a high payout from ransomware victims.
If unattended, some attacks may last hours. Some may last days. It all depends on the criminal’s goals and how long it takes your company to respond.
Protect Your Network from Attacks with Apposite’s DDoS Tester
As DDoS attacks multiply, guarding against them becomes more difficult, and companies need to prepare their networks for these attacks. DDoS Storm simulates high levels of traffic similar to a real DDoS attack so your organization can test the effectiveness of your security measures.
By simulating an attack against layers 2-7, you can understand how well your security investments and response strategies protect your network. Validate new devices before investing, test firewalls, evaluate response times, and more — all without disrupting any legitimate users on your network.
Want to learn more? Download the datasheet to discover how DDoS Storm can help you better protect your network.
DDoS Attacks Are More Sophisticated, More Effective, and More Common
As technology has evolved, so have DDoS attacks — so much so that the technology required to perform even a basic attack has become commoditized. For only $500, anyone can pay for a DDoS subscription service and launch an attack on your company in no time. But today’s threats are far more advanced than in decades past:
- Many Occur in Stages: An attack can last minutes, hours, or even days and can be repeated at regular intervals.
- Techniques Vary: Application, protocol, and volumetric attacks can target every layer of the technology stack. Campaigns that cycle attack vectors or target multiple layers of the stack make it harder to flag anomalies.
- They Are Complicated: Taking the idea a step further, threat actors combine burst attacks on DNS servers with attacks rooted in encrypted (SSL/TLS).
As a result, it’s challenging to detect and understand when and where your networks are under attack, unless you have software designed to help.
Is Your Business Vulnerable to DDoS Attacks?
Successful DDoS attacks have severe consequences for organizations. Companies need to proactively address these breaches to avoid potential damages, such as:
Downtime and Service Disruptions
For every moment that a DDoS attack takes system resources offline, orders aren’t taken, sales come to a halt, employees are unable to get work done, customer service is inaccessible, and workflows come to a stop. Financial losses from a DDoS attack can quickly accumulate. Today’s campaigns cost businesses an estimated $22K per minute.
Short-Term Damages
Often, companies don’t have the time to address an attack. As it occurs, they have to divert personnel from their daily tasks to identify, remediate, eventually stop the assault, and establish checks to thwart any follow-up attacks. Depending on how long the breach occurs and the type of information targeted, the clean-up time can last hours, days, weeks or even months, time that could have been spent on more valuable tasks within your business.
Corporate Branding Suffers
Bad news about a DDoS attack can spread at lightning speed across social media. As a result, customers become concerned about their data and skeptical about your organization’s ability to protect sensitive information. Before long, your brand becomes associated with risk and technology shortcomings, and potential clients take their business to your competitors.
Don’t let any of these things impact the success of your business by leaving your network defenses to chance. If you already have measures in place to protect against DDoS attacks (or you’re considering investing in new tools), make sure they perform well in real-world scenarios. Test your network’s ability to handle DDoS attacks before they happen.
DDoS Storm Helps Keep Your Organization Safe
DDoS Storm (Apposite’s DDoS Tester) empowers companies to shift from reactive to proactive DDoS defense strategy. Our cost-effective solution helps manufacturers, providers, and enterprise IT teams simulate and evaluate their current DDoS monitoring, detection, and mitigation abilities. The simulations provide visibility into network strengths and weaknesses.
With DDoS Storm, you can simulate:
- Assaults that scale from small to the world’s biggest botnets.
- Attacks that originate from various countries.
- Assaults that initiate a range of preset and custom attacks that target multiple application layers.
- Level 2-3 attacks and test network-level vulnerabilities, like switching, and routing to prevent network disruption and unauthorized access.
- Level 4-7 campaigns, which target protocols and applications, so you protect data, user sessions, and application functionality.
- Attacks that flood targets with traffic that appears to come from a single device.
- Advanced traffic generation simulates multiple devices with unique IP or MAC addresses originating from a custom mix of countries.
- Multi-terabit per second attacks that either launch all at once or ramp slowly to avoid detection.
You can run as many tests as you want to help gauge your system security’s strength. Then, you can repeat tests, compare results, and tweak configurations to identify how different changes improve security — before investing in other expensive testing or security solutions.
With DDoS Storm’s fast, five-step test generation process, you can understand how well your network would fare against DDoS invasions. Identify how well — and quickly — your DDoS protections, like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), and other tools, identify and block malicious traffic. You can even automate periodic testing, to prevent new attacks as the threat landscape evolves.
DDoS Storm: Your Organization’s DDoS Tester
DDoS campaigns are a rising threat to enterprises. They are especially dangerous because they are easy to launch and can cause significant damage. Most companies are not prepared, leaving them vulnerable to hackers.
As attacks like this increase and methods evolve, Apposite’s DDoS Storm provides enterprises with an easy-to-use solution to evaluate network security measures and response times.
Simulate attacks at scale, identify and repair vulnerabilities, and protect your network all within an intuitive user interface. Why pay more for a security testing solution that is too complicated to use?
Want to learn more? Download the datasheet to discover the power of Apposite’s DDoS Storm for your organization.