31 Oct DDoS Attacks: Volumetric and Application Threats

In recent years, the cybersecurity landscape has evolved rapidly, bringing increasingly sophisticated threats. Among these, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are one of the most complex challenges for businesses and online service providers.

Growing digitalization, cloud adoption, and the expansion of IoT have created new vulnerabilities, making an updated approach to DDoS defense essential. According to recent statistics, DDoS attacks have increased by 300% over the last three years, with peaks exceeding terabits per second and durations that can last for entire days.

What is a DDoS attack and why it’s dangerous

A DDoS attack aims to make an online service unavailable by overloading servers, networks, or applications with a massive flow of malicious traffic coming from thousands or millions of compromised devices. The consequences can include:

• Service interruption and prolonged downtime: even a few minutes of inactivity can cause significant financial losses
• Loss of revenue and customers: users who cannot access services turn to competitors
• Damage to the company’s reputation: customer trust is compromised
• Possible sensitive data breaches: DDoS attacks can be used as a decoy for more serious intrusions
• Mitigation and recovery costs: emergency interventions and post-attack analysis require considerable resources

Main types of DDoS attacks

DDoS attacks fall mainly into three categories, each with specific characteristics and mitigation methods:

The evolution of DDoS attacks

In recent years, DDoS attacks have evolved significantly in terms of complexity, volume, and sophistication:

Increased power of volumetric attacks

Thanks to distributed DDoS botnets composed of millions of compromised IoT devices and amplification via protocols such as DNS, NTP, and SSDP, volumetric attacks can reach hundreds of Gbps or even terabits per second, challenging even scalable cloud infrastructures and providers with high bandwidth capacity.

Increasingly sophisticated application attacks

Cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities in CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), REST APIs, and web applications to generate seemingly legitimate traffic that mimics real user behavior, making it extremely difficult to distinguish genuine requests from malicious ones without advanced behavioral analysis systems.

Multi-vector attacks

Modern attacks simultaneously combine volumetric, protocol, and application techniques, requiring integrated and intelligent defense solutions capable of detecting and mitigating threats across all layers of the network stack (Layers 3, 4, and 7).

The impact of new technologies

• Cloud computing: while it provides scalability, it introduces complexity in managing distributed traffic and multi-tenant DDoS protection
• IoT and connected devices: millions of vulnerable devices (IP cameras, home routers, smart TVs) can be compromised and used to generate unprecedentedly large botnets
• Automation and AI in cyberattacks: automated systems based on machine learning allow attackers to modulate the attack in real time, dynamically adapting to implemented countermeasures

Servereasy DDoS Protection: proprietary technology and enterprise-grade capacity

Since 2015, Servereasy has developed in-house an Always-On DDoS protection system that is one of the most advanced solutions available on the Italian market. The infrastructure is designed to ensure operational continuity even during massive attacks, with enterprise-level technical features:

Technical Specifications

• Mitigation capacity: up to 1.2 Tbps (terabits per second) and 960 Mpps (million packets per second)
• XDP (eXpress Data Path) technology: ultra-fast packet processing at kernel level with servers equipped with 100Gbit NICs in Load Balancing
• Routing-level pre-filtering: a proprietary system that blocks attacks before they reach the customer’s network, eliminating malicious traffic upstream
• Multi-layer protection: effective mitigation on Layers 3/4 (volumetric and protocol) and Layer 7 (application)
• Automatic detection: constant traffic monitoring with behavioral analysis and instant activation of mitigation
• No limits: unlimited protection at no additional cost, regardless of the volume of malicious traffic or the duration of the attack

Available DDoS Protection Plans

Competitive Advantages

• Free inclusion: the Basic protection is included by default with all Servereasy services (VPS Cloud, Dedicated Servers, Virtual Datacenter, IP Transit) with no hidden costs
• Total transparency: no charges for mitigated traffic, no limits on the volume or duration of attacks
• Proprietary Italian technology: in-house development and management, with over 10 years of experience in DDoS mitigation
• Enterprise scalability: ability to handle multi-terabit attacks thanks to the distributed infrastructure
• 24/7 technical support: expert team available around the clock for assistance and custom configurations
• Detailed reporting: comprehensive analysis of mitigated attacks with charts, statistics, and identified patterns

The role of firewalls and application protection systems

Defense against application-layer DDoS attacks (Layer 7) requires a multilayer approach that integrates advanced technologies and operational strategies. The adoption of DDoS firewalls is the first level of protection, allowing suspicious traffic to be filtered before it reaches critical servers or applications.

Alongside traditional firewalls, WAFs (Web Application Firewalls) play a key role in analyzing HTTP and HTTPS requests, identifying abnormal behavioral patterns such as HTTP flooding, large-scale automated access attempts, or exploitation of application vulnerabilities (SQL Injection, XSS, CSRF).

These tools not only block malicious traffic but also allow custom rule configuration based on the type of application or web service, protecting complex infrastructures such as data centers and multi-tenant cloud platforms. Servereasy’s Advanced protection integrates a proprietary WAF with rules optimized for the most common web applications (WordPress, Magento, PrestaShop, custom applications).

The combination of firewalls and application protection systems significantly increases system resilience, reducing the impact of potential multi-vector attacks and ensuring operational continuity even in sophisticated attack scenarios.

Network traffic monitoring and analysis

An essential element of modern security strategy is real-time network traffic monitoring. Continuously analyzing traffic makes it possible to identify suspicious behavior or sudden request spikes, often generated by DDoS botnets or targeted denial of service attacks.

The Servereasy DDoS protection system uses advanced monitoring tools integrated with machine learning and analytics, enabling you to:

• Detect anomalous patterns: automatic identification of suspicious behavior based on behavioral analysis
• Distinguish legitimate from malicious traffic: intelligent classification of requests without compromising performance
• Activate automatic mitigation: instant response to attacks without manual intervention
• Generate detailed reporting: dashboards with real-time charts, historical statistics, and analysis of mitigated attacks

Supervision extends to all critical components, from operating systems to publicly exposed services, quickly pinpointing resources that could be targeted. Through this proactive activity, companies can prevent disruptions, optimize traffic distribution, and reduce risks linked to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

Servereasy Infrastructure and Network

Servereasy’s DDoS protection is based on a robust, redundant infrastructure designed to ensure maximum reliability and high performance:

Settimo Milanese Datacenter

• Strategic location: Milan metropolitan area for minimal latency (5–15 ms) to Italian users
• Total redundancy: every rack has dual power supply and switches with redundant uplinks
• Physical security: badge-controlled access, automatic fire suppression system, 24/7 video surveillance
• GDPR compliance: data stored exclusively within Italian and European territory

Network and Connectivity

• AS60798: RIPE-accredited Autonomous System for autonomous network management
• MiX Milan: membership in the Milan Internet eXchange for optimal connectivity with Italian ISPs
• Tier 1 carriers: direct connections with GTT and Telecom Italia Sparkle for efficient global routing
• 100Gbit uplinks: high bandwidth capacity to handle traffic spikes and volumetric attacks

Server security and data center resilience

Protecting data centers and ensuring maximum server security is now an essential requirement for any digital infrastructure. Volumetric DDoS attacks, capable of saturating bandwidth and generating massive traffic, are one of the main threats for companies and service providers.

Effective protection is not limited to installing firewalls or WAFs, but also includes:

• Careful operating system management: hardening, regular security patches, optimized configurations
• Optimal configuration of network resources: rate limiting, connection tracking, TCP/IP stack tuning
• Resilience and disaster recovery plans: automatic backups, failover, documented procedures
• Proactive monitoring: continuous analysis of system metrics and network traffic

Servereasy services with included DDoS protection

Cloud VPS

Based on Proxmox with NVMe RAID10 storage and AMD Epyc processors:

• 5 plans available (BL1–BL5) from €5 to €54/month
• Basic DDoS Protection included free of charge
• Automatic daily backup with 7-day retention
• Uplink up to 5 Gbit/s
• Option to upgrade to Advanced protection (€14/month)

Dedicated Servers

Professional Supermicro hardware with 4 series available:

• AMD Ryzen AM4/AM5: from €64/month with DDR4/DDR5 ECC
• Intel Xeon Coffee Lake: from €110/month
• AMD Epyc Rome: from €150/month (Single CPU) or €250/month (Dual CPU)
• Basic DDoS Protection included free of charge
• 99.9% SLA with refunds up to 100%
• IPMI/KVM included for complete remote management

Virtual Datacenter

High-availability Private Cloud infrastructures:

• Proxmox clusters with hyperconverged Ceph storage
• Basic DDoS Protection included, upgrade to Advanced or Custom available
• N+1 high availability with automatic VM restart
• Complete Managed service
• Customizable hardware

IP Transit

Carrier-class connectivity with integrated DDoS protection:

• Bandwidth from 1 Gbit to 100 Gbit per port
• Included DDoS protection with 1.2 Tbps capacity
• Dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6
• BGP FlowSpec supported
• Custom BGP communities

Advanced DDoS defense strategies

An effective approach requires combining advanced technologies with operational best practices:

1. Continuous traffic monitoring

• Real-time packet analysis: deep packet inspection to identify malicious patterns
• Behavioral anomaly detection: machine learning to distinguish legitimate traffic from attacks
• Advanced reporting: dashboards with charts, statistics, and configurable alerts
• SIEM integration: log export for correlation with other security events

2. Distributed mitigation solutions

Distributed mitigation platforms like Servereasy’s filter malicious traffic before it reaches critical infrastructure, with advantages such as:

• Immediate latency reduction: routing-level pre-filtering eliminates malicious traffic upstream
• Automatic scalability: ability to handle traffic spikes up to 1.2 Tbps without performance degradation
• Integrated multi-vector protection: simultaneous mitigation of volumetric, protocol, and application attacks
• No performance impact: legitimate traffic is not slowed down

3. Application hardening

• Rate limiting: limit requests per IP, session, or API endpoint
• CAPTCHA and human verification: implement challenge–response to distinguish bots from real users
• Constant updates: security patches for CMSs, plugins, libraries, and frameworks
• Input validation: rigorous sanitization of all user inputs
• Connection limiting: cap simultaneous connections per IP

4. Resilience and disaster recovery plans

• Regular automatic backups: Servereasy includes daily backups with 7-day retention in VPS
• Failover testing: periodically verify recovery procedures
• Documented procedures: playbooks for incident management
• Collaboration with the provider: Servereasy’s 24/7 support for rapid interventions
• N+1 high availability: available in Virtual Datacenters for automatic VM restarts

Practical example: volumetric vs application attack

The importance of a proactive approach

The key to reducing the impact of DDoS attacks is to prevent rather than react. Servereasy’s Always-On protection constantly operates in the background, analyzing all traffic and automatically activating mitigation when needed, without requiring manual intervention or complex configurations.

Benefits of Servereasy’s proactive approach

• Early threat identification: behavioral analysis detects attacks in their early stages
• Fully automated response: instant mitigation without human intervention
• Resource optimization: intelligent traffic distribution during legitimate spikes
• Continuous learning: machine learning algorithms continuously improve effectiveness
• Zero downtime: legitimate traffic is not interrupted during mitigation

The advanced tools integrated into the Servereasy platform allow you to:

• Identify potential threats before they become critical through predictive analysis
• Automate attack response in real time with sub-second latency
• Optimize network and server resources during legitimate traffic spikes
• Generate detailed reporting for post-attack analysis and continuous improvement
• Configure custom rules to protect specific applications (available with the Advanced plan)

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