Free Ddos Website Protection Tools and Techniques You Need to Know

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Protecting your website from DDoS attacks is crucial in today's digital landscape. With the right tools and techniques, you can safeguard your online presence and prevent costly downtime.

Cloudflare's free plan offers robust DDoS protection, capable of blocking over 500,000 queries per second.

To get started, you'll need to set up Cloudflare on your website, which involves adding a few lines of code to your DNS settings. This will direct traffic through Cloudflare's network, where it can be filtered for malicious activity.

Understanding DDoS Attacks

These attacks can be particularly sneaky, as they might look like legitimate traffic. For example, a Domain Name System (DNS) amplification attack uses botnets to spoof the target IP address and make requests to an open DNS server.

Here are some telltale signs of a DDoS attack:

  • Lots of traffic from the same IP address or range of addresses.
  • A traffic surge to a single site endpoint, often a particular page.
  • Lots of 404 errors or traffic patterns that don't align with your site's usual traffic.

What Is a DDoS Attack

A DDoS attack is a type of cyber attack that overwhelms a network or system with traffic, making it difficult or impossible for users to access it.

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DDoS attacks can be classified into different groups based on what they target. One way to categorize them is by the layer they target.

DDoS attacks can target the network and transport layers, which can alter how data moves across the web and affect transmission protocols.

Volumetric attacks are a type of DDoS attack that aims to overwhelm these layers. They can be carried out using botnets to spoof the target IP address and make requests to an open DNS server.

How to Identify

Identifying a DDoS attack can be tricky, but there are some key signs to look out for. If your site slows or crashes, it's a sign to implement your disaster plan.

Lots of traffic that all presents common signatures can be a sign of a DDoS attack. This might mean traffic is coming from the same IP address or range of addresses.

Traffic surges to a single site endpoint, usually a particular page, can also be a sign. Lots of 404 errors can be a clear indication.

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Traffic patterns that don't align with what you'd expect your site to receive are another red flag. This might be a peak outside of your usual time range or an unnatural event.

You'll need to lean on your analytics software to figure out what's relevant and related. This can help you determine if the traffic is legitimate or malicious.

Protecting Your Website

To protect your website from a DDoS attack, you can enable the "Under Attack Mode" toggle available on the Overview screen. This will help mitigate the attack.

You should also consider implementing on-premises protection using hardware devices on the network to filter out traffic for protected servers. However, this may not be enough to stop a large-scale attack.

To supplement your on-premises protection, consider using a cloud-based DDoS setup for the best response. Some cloud providers, like Alibaba Cloud, offer free DDoS protection with a 5 Gbps mitigation capacity.

Here are some additional steps you can take to protect your website:

  • Disable XML-RPC and REST API in WordPress to reduce the number of requests made to your website.
  • Use a Website Application Firewall (WAF) that runs on the application level to block traffic before it reaches your web server.

Basic Setup

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To get started with protecting your website, you should know that Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS Basic is enabled and initialized by default with the creation of ECS, Server Load Balance, or EIP instances.

This service provides a 5 Gbps mitigation capacity free of charge, which is a great starting point for small to medium-sized websites.

The Alibaba Cloud Security Anti-DDoS Basic console is where you can set the Cleaning Trigger Value and check the Protection Threshold.

Having a higher credibility score can also get you more extra DDoS mitigation capacity, so it's worth learning about the credibility score policy and maintaining a better credibility score.

Protection

To protect your website, you need to consider various options. Implementing on-premises protection using hardware devices on the network can be a viable way to mitigate and stop a DDoS attack. This can be done with hardware DDoS mitigation units from companies like Radware and F5.

However, on-premises protection has its limitations. It can't stop large-scale attacks, especially DDoS attacks. That's why you should supplement it with a cloud-based DDoS setup for the best response.

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Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS Basic is a service that provides a 5 Gbps mitigation capacity free of charge. It's enabled and initialized by default with the creation of ECS, Server Load Balance, or EIP instances. You can set Cleaning Trigger Value and check Protection Threshold in the Alibaba Cloud Security Anti-DDoS Basic console.

A higher credibility score can give you more extra DDoS mitigation capacity. It's recommended to learn the credibility score policy and maintain a better credibility score.

To further protect your website, you should also enable the "Under Attack Mode" toggle available on the Overview screen. This is especially important if your site is currently under attack, or you've been advised to do so.

If you're using WordPress, you should also apply security best practices to make your website even more secure. This includes following a complete step-by-step WordPress security guide for beginners.

Remove Brute Force

Removing Brute Force attacks is crucial to protect your website from malicious activity.

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You can identify whether it's a Brute Force or DDoS attack by looking at the Sucuri plugin's login reports.

Install and activate the free Sucuri plugin to access the Last Logins page.

A large number of random login requests on this page indicates a Brute-Force attack on your wp-admin.

To stop it, you can refer to our guide on how to block Brute Force attacks in WordPress.

Disabling XML-RPC in WordPress is also a good practice to reduce Brute Force attacks. Simply add the following code to your site's .htaccess file to do so.

Mitigation Strategies

You can prevent and mitigate DDoS attacks by routing traffic away from your infrastructure with Anti-DDoS Basic, a free Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service from Alibaba Cloud.

This service guarantees availability and performance of your properties on Alibaba Cloud, providing enhanced visibility and control over your security.

Anti-DDoS Basic defends against various DDoS attacks, including ICMP flood, UDP flood, TCP flood, SYN flood, and ACK flood attacks.

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To scale your DDoS mitigation capacity, you can improve your security credibility score, which allows you to get more extra DDoS mitigation capacity.

Here are some simple ways to layer your provision to help your defenses:

  1. Blackhole routing: This is where you filter traffic to a null route and drop it from the network.
  2. Rate limiting: While this won’t be enough on its own to halt a DDoS attack, you can cap the number of actions completed by each user.
  3. Network diffusion: If you take the traffic hitting your site and scatter it across a distributed network, you’ll spread the impact of a DDoS attack in theory.

By scaling your bandwidth, network connections, and other resources, you can combat a DDoS attack. Some solutions come as a cloud service, which distributes traffic as a defense.

You can also use on-site solutions, such as CAPTCHAs, to protect important endpoints on your site.

To implement a DDoS mitigation strategy, you can set lower SYN or UDP thresholds, and time out half-open connections on the server.

By formulating a strategy and response plan, you can save your business from the impact of a DDoS attack.

Tools and Technologies

To protect your website from DDoS attacks, you'll need the right tools and technologies. Cloudflare is a popular choice, offering a free plan that can help mitigate attacks.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can also be a valuable asset, as it can help distribute traffic and reduce the load on your server. This can be especially helpful for websites with high traffic volumes.

Some popular CDN options include Cloudflare and MaxCDN, which can help improve page load times and reduce the risk of DDoS attacks.

Top Tools

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Google Cloud Platform is a leading cloud computing service that provides a suite of products and services for computing, storage, and networking. It's widely used in the industry for its scalability and flexibility.

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that allows developers to run code without provisioning or managing servers. It's a great option for real-time data processing and event-driven computing.

Microsoft Azure provides a range of tools for developers, including Azure Functions, which allows for event-driven serverless computing. It's also known for its strong security features and compliance certifications.

Docker is a popular containerization platform that enables developers to package, ship, and run applications in containers. It's widely adopted in the industry for its ease of use and portability.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It's widely used in production environments for its reliability and scalability.

Cloud-Based Solution

Cloud-based DDoS solutions are becoming increasingly popular due to their scalability, always-on nature, and lower maintenance costs compared to hardware solutions.

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More sites are now relying on cloud protection as it's cheaper and offers greater scope for protection than ISP-level solutions.

Cloud services often have massive networks of computers to distribute traffic to, making them more effective at mitigating DDoS attacks.

Amazon's AWS Shield takes advantage of its network to automatically detect and mitigate DDoS attacks, and you can customize its protection alongside your first-party Web Application Firewall (WAF).

Cloudflare's Magic Transit can perform well as a supplement to your existing on-premises solution, offering a full complement of tools to manage your virtual network, including load balancers and advanced packet filtering.

Melba Kovacek

Writer

Melba Kovacek is a seasoned writer with a passion for shedding light on the complexities of modern technology. Her writing career spans a diverse range of topics, with a focus on exploring the intricacies of cloud services and their impact on users. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for simplifying complex concepts, Melba has established herself as a trusted voice in the tech journalism community.

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