Denial of service attack
i) Overloading the network to prevent original network traffic
ii) Disconnecting the
connections between two machines prevent access to a service
iii) Blocking a particular person to use an online service.
iv) Blocking service to a specific system or any individual person.
v) Blocking the
state of information.
Now let’s understand how Cloudflare prevent DDos attack through a tale
Once upon a time, there was no protection against DDOS attacks, Spamming, Crawling bots etc.
A person was tired of getting DDOSed by someone and he was always thinking about how to prevent this attack and how to handle these types of fake requests. Because the requests that were coming to his site were not real they were fake.
He got a brilliant idea! He thought to change the server where the present website is situated. He worked like he said. He built a new setup with a more powerful server which will work like a proxy server where the traffic will hit,
he copied all the static files of his website to that new powerful server.
Now he made all the traffic that was trying to visit his website to the new server. So, whenever a visitor tries to enter his old website, the system shows the data from the new website. Because he redirected the new website with the new one. This was running very well.
But surprisingly after a week his new server again got DDOSed.
He thought What is the Fruit?
He realized that his new server is not protected as his old server. And he did not do any work on the security of the website. He thought he has to find a way to block multiple unnecessary requests from only one visitor. So, he coded a new program that can stop a visitor or IP address if the user tries to send multiple requests in a very short time.
He implemented that program code in his new server. After a few times, a DDOSer again tried to DDoS his site and the new program that he wrote came to the ground. That program blocked all the requests and the IP of the DDOS attacker. He was so much happy that he blocked unnecessary traffic from users.
Then he added new features like caching, blocking on the basis of IP reputation etc. Then the setup was named “Cloudflare”. Now he has built 79 of these types of servers across the world and provides their services to everyone who pays money for it. Although there is a free version it is not as effective as the paid version. They help to boost the website’s response.
Let’s say when a user from India tries to visit the website, Cloudflare connects the nearest server which is in India and commands it to serve him and in this way the user gets a faster response.
