What is the harm of DoS? How to prevent DoS

With the great advancement of technology, cyber attacks are also becoming more and more dangerous. Therefore, learning about the methods, harms and ways to avoid them and DoS / DDoS are the most common attack methods. Therefore, Tino Group and you learn about what DoS / DDoS is, how to recognize it, what is the harm of DoS and how to prevent DoS!

Learn about DoS
What is DoS?
DoS stands for Denial of Service, which roughly translates to denial of service attack . With this method, attackers will aim to break the defense or function of an application, network, or website to prevent users from accessing it normally.

Usually, they will target services, websites or infrastructure with a large number of users to attack.

DoS attacks will implement ways to flood or overload the target's system so that the server can't handle any more requests. The characteristic of DoS is that the attacker only uses a single device.

What is DDoS?
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, which roughly translates to distributed denial of service attack and this is an upgraded version of DoS.

The characteristics of DDoS are that they are more difficult to detect, have many large systems or networks, and are aimed at attacking a single target from many sources. From there, the target's server crashed and could not handle any more requests.

DDoS was first recorded in 2018. The object of this attack was the source code hosting service GitHub .

DoS/DDoS identification signs
If your website or system is in a state that has not crashed, it will be very difficult for you to distinguish what is a sign of a virus infection, which is a sign of DDoS / DoS. However, they have the following common signs:

There is an unusual amount of traffic with very high volume
The process of using the website is suddenly unusually slow
The amount of requests, the amount of spam suddenly increased, causing overload
Bandwidth is severely reduced
And worst of all, your website and system are completely down and inaccessible.

The terrible effects of DoS
Cyber ​​attacks always bring incalculable consequences for the owner of the system, application or website and also the user. From consequences such as suffering data loss, affecting user experience; "invade" to other websites as well as service providers (DDoS harm).

System crash
When under a DoS attack, the percentage of your website, system or application is down and users or yourself cannot access it.

This means that, in the case of a business or a person making money from the service of your website, system or application, you will not earn any revenue if your website/service is down. This will result in a bad customer experience.

Worse, your web SEO efforts can suffer if Google crawls and evaluates your website for abnormal activity.

If you don't back up your data and restore the system quickly, you may run into trouble when Google can't find the internal links.

Create a big security hole
After the attack, the system and you will focus on quickly restoring your website and services back to normal; it's possible that your security system was down and hasn't been reactivated after the attack or hasn't been patched.

This will cause hackers to come back and attack your website with a backdoor – backdoor, crippling your website, your system again.

Therefore, it is better to focus your resources on patching vulnerabilities in your systems, websites and services first. After that, you can quickly bring your service and website back online.

Impact on hosting and servers
As for DDoS attacks, if your website has been hacked and you are using shared hosting, you are most likely a victim. Even more dangerous, you are a springboard for them to continue to attack other websites on the same server and cause damage to the shared hosting service provider.

This will lead to total system paralysis.

Waste of time and money
If you have backed up your data, it will take time to restore them back to the state they were in before the attack. However, if you do not back it up, there is a chance that you will lose your data and seriously affect your revenue.

The attack will affect data and user experience, you will have to hire experts to restore the system, and sometimes you will have to change service providers. All of these factors lead to lost money and lost time.

How to prevent DoS
Regularly back up data
Regularly backing up data is one of the most effective prevention methods! If you regularly back up, you can easily restore it when your website goes down.

You will also become more proactive in your DoS/DDoS defense.

Use firewall
If your website, the services you provide are directly related to e-commerce or a huge number of users, you should pay attention and invest in a firewall system, DoS/DDoS detection and prevention system. to avoid unfortunate damages when they happen.

And preventing attacks before they happen will be the most effective method of prevention.

Using CDN
CDN - Content Delivery Networks roughly translates as content delivery network . This service is not intended to protect against DoS/DDoS attacks but rather allow a huge amount of traffic to take place, or in short, absorb the attack.

However, whether it is fully absorbed or not will depend on 3 factors:

The attack volume is larger than the capacity you have, the system can withstand or not.
Not every website or website content can use a CDN.
CDNs cannot protect applications.
At this point, we have come together to learn about what DoS is, what DDoS is, the signs that you are under a DoS / DDoS attack as well as how terrible the effects of DoS / DDoS are. Tino Group hopes that you will be able to avoid all cyber attacks and keep your system and website safe.

Frequently asked questions about the harmful effects of DoS
DoS vs DDoS, which is more harmful?
Both bring incalculable side effects. However, DDoS brings more terrible harm because they target more targets and it is difficult to determine their intentions and methods.

How to prevent DDoS for VPS?
Just like how to avoid DoS, you should:

Regularly back up data
Use a firewall service
Using a CDN . Content Delivery Network Service
Increase storage capacity and bandwidth
Be proactive before attacks take place in normal times.
To better understand each prevention method as well as how DDoS takes place, please refer to the full article: Summary of effective anti-DDoS for VPS.

What to do when you suspect you are under a DoS attack?
Right or wrong, if you suspect you are under a DoS attack, you should back up your data and immediately contact your hosting provider/security expert to minimize the risk. multiple harms brought by DoS; as well as you will get useful advice from them.

How to prevent DoS/DDoS 100% effective?
Currently, there is no 100% effective defense against DoS/DDoS attacks. However, applying many measures to prevent DoS / DDoS attacks will minimize the harm brought to your website and system.

Regularly backing up data is also an effective way to prevent DoS.