How To Mitigate A DNS Flood Attack: How To Prevent Your Website From Getting Hit
The Domain Name System, or DNS for short, plays a crucial role in how modern websites function. Without it, you’d be unable to visit any of your favorite websites. Luckily, most users are well acquainted with how the internet works. Which is why most people will have no idea that their home network is being used as part of a cyberattack known as a DNS flood attack. These attacks are very stealthy and may go unnoticed by the vast majority of people who use the internet every day. This article will explain what a DNS flood attack is and how you can protect yourself from one if it ever occurs in your business or personal life.
If you’d like to learn more about this type of attack before reading further, continue reading.
What is a DNS Flood Attack?
A cyberattack that floods a computer’s IP address with requests to a server is known as a DNS flood attack. This type of attack is incredibly dangerous because it can cause the server to crash and in some cases, result in an entire network being shut down.
The goal of this type of attack is typically to either overwhelm the server with requests, which will make it unstable, or to gain access to other computers on the network. The attacker will often do this in order to gain access to sensitive data or delete important files on your website, making it unavailable to visitors or customers.
DNS Flood Attack in action
DNS attacks are a type of DDoS attack that targets the Domain Name System, or DNS for short. Instead of targeting websites directly, this specific type of attack aims to take down the internet by attacking DNS servers. This is done by sending a massive amount of requests to these servers at once. A DNS flood attack can be carried out by anyone with a computer and an internet connection, not just hackers.
What You Can Do To Protect Yourself From A DNS Flood Attack
The only way to really protect yourself from a DNS attack is to identify the signs of one and be wary of them. Here are some things to watch out for:
- Your browser’s address bar turning into gibberish
- Experiencing crashes or difficulties loading websites
- Inability to access certain websites
- Unusual influxes of traffic on your website’s server
- Problematic DNS records on your domain name registrar
If you see any of these signs, it’s best to contact your company’s IT team as soon as possible. They should know what actions need to be taken and can help you prevent attacks from happening in the future.
How can a Wallarm stop DNS Flood attack?
Wallarm manages your website’s DNS from the cloud, saving your business from costly downtime. We provide a range of actions that can be taken in response to an attack, such as blocking specific IP addresses and/or subnets, or adding a warning message to the website’s homepage. In addition to these actions, Wallarm is able to monitor uptime and performance metrics for your website.
We offer you our products:
- GoTestWAF - Evaluate the performance of your WAF and get a free report
- Cloud WAF - Automates application and API protection without manual configuration or ongoing maintenance investments
- API Security Platform - Automated real-time application protection for websites, microservices and APIs
Mitigating DNS Flood Attacks: Conclusion
So, if you’re worried about this type of attack happening to your website, you should take these precautions.
The first step is to make sure that your DNS settings are up-to-date. If they are not, you’ll have no idea when a DNS flood attack occurs or what the information on your system looks like. The second precaution is to stay safe on the internet. Change your passwords and use common sense when browsing the web. This article will provide some more precautions that may help keep you safe from the dangers of DNS flood attacks in the future.
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