Did you know that a DDoS attack can bring your website to a standstill just minutes after it launches?
Furthermore, these types of attacks have become more frequent. In fact, there have been over 17 million DDoS attacks launched so far.
By becoming familiar with DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) and taking steps to prevent it, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in the future.
In this post, we’ll explain what happens in a DDoS attack. Then, we’ll show you five easy steps you can take right now to stop an attack in progress and protect your website from it.
Decoding a DDoS attack
DDoS attacks are not like regular hacks. In most cases, a hacker gains access to your website and uses it for nefarious purposes.
But in a DDoS attack, hackers attack your website from the outside, which means they don’t need to access your website. They don’t steal anything or inject any malicious scripts into your website.
So what specifically are they doing to harm bolivia phone number data your site from the outside?
Let’s take a look at what exactly happens in a DDoS attack.
What is a DDoS attack?
In a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, hackers send large amounts of traffic to your website in order to overwhelm the server. This causes your website to become unresponsive and inaccessible to visitors.
Visitors will find your site extremely slow or may see error messages like “This site can’t be reached” or “Your connection timed out.”
And you may be wondering, “How exactly does this work?”
Every time a visitor opens your website, their browser (such as Chrome or Firefox) makes a request to the website’s server to fetch the data needed to display the website.
All web servers have a limited number of resources what we liked about promo to process these requests, so if it receives too many requests at the same time, the server may become exhausted and become unresponsive.
And in turn, your website goes offline or visitors are unable to load the website properly.
Hackers use this to their advantage, and this is how they perform DDoS attacks.
Now let’s see how hackers set up DDoS attacks.
How DDoS Attacks Work
Here, we’ll walk you through the general stages of a DDoS attack (although the specific steps may vary depending on your website and the individual hacker).
1. Setting up a botnet: First, they hack into all kinds of devices, like computers and cell phones, and install their malware. And they can leave them sitting there for a long time without the owner noticing anything.
This is called a botnet , which is your hacked network of machines.
These days, hackers don’t even have to go to the trouble aqb directory of setting this up. Botnets can be hired on the dark web.
2. Launch the attack: Then, when they are ready to launch the attack, they have the botnet send requests to your website. This could mean thousands or hundreds of thousands of requests flooding your server.
When your server can’t handle the load, it becomes slow or unresponsive, and your website becomes inaccessible to visitors.
You may have security measures in place on your website, such as a security plugin, but it can still be subject to a DDoS attack. This is because hackers are targeting your server resources externally and don’t need to hack into your website to cause damage.
Some attacks may not be successful, but others may cause irreparable damage.
Before we teach you how to detect and protect your website from DDoS attacks, let’s clarify why hackers go to all this trouble.
What is the reason behind DDoS attacks?
There are different reasons and motives behind these attacks.
Hackers may be seeking financial gain and demand a ransom payment in Bitcoin. Or they may be competitors or users seeking revenge for an unfavorable policy.
They may also have political motivations or want to spread a message. Additionally, there are some hackers who do it out of boredom and because they can.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid these attacks, and if you are under attack, it can be stopped.
How to detect a DDoS attack on your WordPress website?
There are classic signs that help you identify a DDoS attack. You’ll probably see that your website won’t load and instead displays a message saying that the connection timed out.
Other signs include:
- Your website is responding slowly
- Your website is unresponsive
- Visitors complain about problems accessing the website
- You are unable to upload or publish any content
- Unable to access WordPress admin panel
If you notice these signs, we recommend that you take the following steps immediately:
1. Check your website’s data usage
If your website is under attack, it will use up your website resources. And you can easily check how much has been used on your web hosting account .
Simply log into your web hosting account and under the “Manage Hosting” tab you will see your usage statistics:
If you can’t find it, contact your web host’s customer support for guidance.
Typically, it takes a lot of traffic to reach these limits, so if you notice that your CPU usage and bandwidth have reached the limit, it’s likely a DDoS attack.
2. Check your website traffic
As we explained, in a DDoS attack, hackers send thousands of requests to your website. This is nothing more than traffic to your website.
You can log into your Google Analytics account to check if there has been a sudden spike in traffic. You can see your active users in real time under the Reports » Real Time tab .
