Cloudflare Stops Record DDoS Attack: What It Means for Your Hosting Security

Have you ever noticed your website is down without any apparent cause? It can scare you, right? One cause of this is a DDoS attack in which hackers purposefully flood a company’s website with phony traffic to disable it. Recently, according to a post on LowEndTalk, Cloudflare was able to prevent the largest DDoS attack on record and that’s kind of a big deal.

So, what went down here?​

Cloudflare was able to stop a massive DDoS attack that peaked at 29.7 Terabits per second. 29.7 Terabits per second — that’s a crazy number and frankly it is a massive number! Within the span of just over one minute, this attack generated an incredible amount of junk traffic. This is done with the intent of overloading servers and taking websites off the air.

What was most shocking to me was the fact that Cloudflare was able to respond automatically to this attack. Cloudflare did not have to have any staff come in or do anything. Cloudflare simply saw the threat through its systems and was able to block it automatically.

Why should you care?​

You may be thinking to yourself, “why would anyone attack my website, I am such a small site?” I thought the same at one time. However, attackers aren’t always focused on attacking massive brands. They often attack smaller websites, hosting companies and VPS servers because those sites/equipment are easier to disable.

We’ve learned the following lessons from this DDoS attack:

• As DDoS attacks continue to grow, they will become larger and more powerful
• A basic level of hosting protection is simply not enough to protect you from these types of attacks anymore
• Automatic security tools will be more important now than at any other time

If your current hosting provider doesn’t have strong DDoS protection, you can expect to experience significant downtime if you suffer even a brief attack.

How to secure your website​

Don’t panic. Just think smart.

• Use a service like Cloudflare to act as a proxy in front of your website
• Choose to host your website with a hosted service that provides DDoS protection
• Monitor your website traffic regularly so that you are able to identify any irregularities before they impact your business

All of these actions can prevent you from experiencing major headaches down the road.

In Closing​

The attack for me was a wake-up call. The Internet is not what it used to be and will continue to become less safe. But, the tools we have at our disposal to protect ourselves are better than they have ever been. Cloudflare was able to stop the largest DDoS attack ever and it is likely they can assist you with protecting your website.