Denial of Service

[sgoodman]

Greetings,

Does a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack individual websites, or the server itself?

Thanks,
Shane.

[suwunk]

DDoS attack usually target site by flooding the server with packets, During a DDOS attack your website may become unreachable since the server is being flooded with bogus requests and cannot process the valid ones.

[sgoodman]

Are the packets sent to individual web sites, or to the server itself?

Shane.

[suwunk]

Network-layer attacks such as UDP, ICMP, and SYN floods pose challenges to server, Apache servers are most favorite target. There are others methods that directly target website such as Application-layer DDoS and exploit on SSL to create a denial of service.

[tima]

Usually the DDoS is targeted against a single site, but often there may be "collateral damage", so to speak.

[sgoodman]

Usually the DDoS is targeted against a single site

Is there anything I can do to protect my site?

Thanks,
Shane.

[tima]

Without making broad generalizations, try not to get involved with the kind of people who would retaliate with a DDoS.

Also because of the distributed nature of the DoS, it's often very difficult, if not impossible, to nail the offender.

[peleus]

Are you using a VPS or a dedicated server? DOS typically sends tons/thousands of request to you server/linux box to authenticate of course server will reject this since the attacker does have the credentials. The attack continuously do this until you can't login yourself anymore.

It is recommended to have at least one backdoor access like a local interface perhaps so you can still login once this attack happens and then block that IP at IP tables. may include the entire subnet just to be sure.

[sgoodman]

I have both VPS and shared hosting.

Shane.