On October 10, 2022, a Russian hacking group known as Killnet knocked offline the websites of some of the United States’ largest airports. The Monday morning attack impacted fourteen U.S. airports, including Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and Los Angeles’s LAX, causing them to be briefly inaccessible.
The type of cyber attack used by Killnet, known as a “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack, is a common threat growing in sophistication and frequency. Killnet has been targeting NATO countries since Russia invaded Ukraine and claimed responsibility for recent cyberattacks on local government websites.
What is a DDoS attack and how does it work?
DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to overload a web server and shut down access to a server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of Internet traffic.
Often, DDoS attacks accomplish this disruption by sending malicious traffic from a botnet — a collection of computers or other devices that have been infected with malware and can thus be controlled remotely by an individual attacker.
3 ways to defend against DDoS attacks
Humans may initiate attacks, but bots execute them. To win, you must fight bots with bots. Secure Web Accelerator powered by Cloudflare automatically detects and mitigates DDoS attacks for our customers, so they don’t have to.
1. Cloudflare’s Anycast Network
When you add Secure Web Accelerator to your domains you are placing a large, distributed cloud network between your server and incoming traffic. Cloudflare acts like a filtration system, blocking attacks on the frontline and only allowing safe traffic to be routed throughout its global network. Available with all Secure Web Accelerator plans.
2. Web Application Firewall
Cloudflare’s always-on DDoS protection works in tandem with a web application firewall (WAF) to protect organizations from cyber threats of all kinds. Available with Secure Web Accelerator Plus & Professional.
3. Cloudflare Analytics
Cloudflare analytics gives you deeper insights into your traffic patterns, threats observed (and blocked), and much more right from the dashboard. Available with Secure Web Accelerator Plus & Professional.
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Cloudflare DDoS attack mitigation at a glance
DDoS Mitigation at Scale
Every server in every Cloudflare data center that spans 275 cities across 100 countries runs the full stack of DDoS mitigation services.
Fast Mitigation
Cloudflare DDoS mitigation systems identify and mitigate most DDoS attacks in under 3 seconds.
Block DDoS Attacks of Any Size
Cloudflare’s network capacity of 155 Tbps blocks 124 billion threats on average daily, including some of the largest DDoS attacks in history.
Secure Web Accelerator
Cloudflare protects entire corporate networks from the largest recorded DDoS attacks in history and can also protect you. Get unlimited and unmetered DDoS protection starting at less than $1/month.