What is a website traffic attack? Core principles and detailed explanation of hazards

in the current digital operation, the website is the core carrier for enterprises to reach users and conduct business, and the threat of network attacks has always followed. Among them, the website traffic attack has become a big worry for many enterprises and website operators due to its destructive and wide-ranging characteristics. This article will disassemble this kind of attack in an all-round way from the definition, core principle, harm and other dimensions to help readers establish a clear cognition and master the basic protection ideas.

What is a website traffic attack?

to prevent large traffic attacks on websites, we must first clarify the nature and characteristics of such attacks to avoid confusion with ordinary network attacks.

1 Core Definitions

website traffic attacks refer to malicious attacks in which attackers control a large number of network nodes and send requests or data traffic to the target website far exceeding its carrying capacity, thereby exhausting the bandwidth and server resources of the website, and eventually leading to the website not being able to provide services to legitimate users normally. This type of attack does not target the code vulnerabilities of the website, but is suppressed from the resource consumption level, which belongs to the typical Distributed Denial-of-service category.

2, typical features

website traffic attacks usually have three characteristics: large traffic scale, fast initiation speed, and scattered attack sources. The traffic scale can reach tens of G or even hundreds of G per second, far exceeding the daily bandwidth carrying capacity of small and medium-sized websites; the initiation speed is fast, and the resources of the target website can be exhausted in a short time; the attack source is mostly controlled broiler equipment, distributed in different regions, and it is difficult to intercept through a single IP ban.

two, the core operating principle of the website traffic attack

understand the operating principle of large traffic attacks on websites, can help us understand its destruction logic from the root cause, and provide a basis for subsequent protection.

1, the principle of resource exhaustion

website traffic attack is resource exhaustion. The server, bandwidth, database and other resources of the target website have a clear bearer limit. When the attack traffic exceeds this limit, the server will be paralyzed because it cannot process all requests in time. For example, the server's CPU and memory are occupied by a large number of invalid requests and cannot respond to the access needs of legitimate users; the bandwidth is full of attack traffic, and legitimate requests cannot be transmitted normally.

2, amplification attack principle

part of the website traffic attack will use traffic amplification technology to further enhance the destructive power of the attack. Attackers use the response mechanism of some network services to send small-capacity requests with the target website Internet Protocol Address to these services, and the service node will return several times or even dozens of times the response data of the request capacity to the target website, so as to achieve the effect of triggering large-scale attack traffic with a small amount of initial traffic, which greatly reduces the cost of attackers.

What are the common types of website traffic attacks?

website traffic attack is not a single type, different attack methods have differences in the implementation path and form, need to be targeted identification.

1, UDP flood attack

UDP flood attack is a relatively basic type of website traffic attack, the attacker sends a large number of meaningless data packets to the UDP port of the target website, the UDP protocol can transmit data without establishing a connection, the server will continue to try to process these invalid data packets, eventually resulting in CPU and bandwidth resources are exhausted, unable to process normal UDP requests.

2, HTTP flood attack

HTTP flood attack is a large traffic attack type for Web services, attackers by simulating legitimate users of HTTP requests, such as sending a large number of page access, form submission requests to the site, the server will allocate resources for these requests for processing, when the number of requests far exceeds the processing capacity of the server, the legitimate user's access request will be run, page loading slow or inaccessible situation.

four, what harm will the website traffic attack bring?

website traffic attack runs through the website operation, user experience, corporate reputation and other levels, and its impact far exceeds the short-term website paralysis.

1 Direct business losses

for e-commerce, online education and other enterprises that rely on the website to carry out business, the website paralysis caused by the website traffic attack will directly cut off the transaction channel, resulting in the loss of real-time orders, the course cannot be carried out normally, and it can bring tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan in a short time. At the same time, during the attack, the enterprise cannot handle user consultation, after-sales and other services, which will further exacerbate the scale of losses.

2, user trust loss

when users repeatedly encounter the situation that the website cannot be accessed and the page load fails, they will question the stability of the website and turn to the competitor's platform. Especially for platforms that rely on user stickiness, the user churn caused by the website traffic attack may be long-term, and it takes a lot of time and cost to restore user trust.

3, corporate reputation damage

the occurrence of large traffic attacks on websites, it will make the outside world question the network protection ability and operational strength of enterprises, especially for financial and government websites, the damage to reputation may cause a chain reaction, affecting the trust of users in the core business of enterprises, and even the attention of industry regulators.

To sum up, the website traffic attack is a kind of malicious network attack with resource consumption as the core, with large scale and strong destructive power. Its operating principle covers resource exhaustion and traffic amplification. Common types include UDP flood attacks, HTTP flood attacks, etc., which will bring direct economic losses to enterprises, user trust loss and other multi-level hazards. Website operators need to fully understand such attacks, build a perfect protection system in advance, and reduce the impact of attacks.