⏱️ Reading time: ~13 minutes | 📅 Published: April 30, 2025 | 🔄 Updated: November 12, 2025
Imagine: your online store generates $5,000 per hour. Suddenly, the site goes down. Not due to a technical glitch — but because of a DDoS attack. In 12 hours, you lose $60,000 in revenue plus another $50,000 in recovery costs. This is reality for thousands of businesses in 2025.
Shocking statistics: In Q1 2025, Cloudflare blocked 20.5 million DDoS attacks — a 358% increase compared to 2024. This means an attack occurs somewhere in the world every 2 seconds.
In this article, we'll thoroughly examine how DDoS attacks work, what protection methods exist, and what you can do right now to prepare your project. We'll also share insights on how hosting providers help minimize risks at the infrastructure level.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) isn't just "server overload." It's a coordinated attack by thousands of infected devices with one goal: make your website unavailable.
Financial losses (immediate):
Long-term consequences:
💡 Real case:
"One European e-commerce project lost $11,000 over a single weekend due to a DDoS attack during Black Friday. The attack lasted 36 hours. This shows how critical it is to have a response plan and properly configured infrastructure."
| Year | Number of Attacks | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 Q1 | 2.6 million | Baseline |
| 2024 Q1 | 5.6 million | +50% YoY |
| 2025 Q1 | 20.5 million | +358% YoY |
Three reasons for exponential growth:
Understanding which industries are most at risk helps assess your own risks.
| # | Industry | % of Attacks | Primary Motivation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gambling & Casinos | 18% | Sharp increase due to legalization |
| 2 | Finance & Banking | 16% | Ransomware + extortion |
| 3 | Telecommunications | 14% | Critical infrastructure |
| 4 | Gaming | 12% | Competitive attacks |
| 5 | E-commerce / Retail | 10% | Attacks during sales |
| 6 | IT Services | 8% | General attacks |
| 7 | Education | 7% | Growth due to online learning |
| 8 | Healthcare | 6% | Lives at risk |
| 9 | Media / News | 5% | Politically motivated |
| 10 | Government | 4% | Cyber warfare |
Some industries showed sharp attack growth compared to 2024:
💡 Conclusion:
NO industry is safe. Even if you're not in the top 10, attacks can come anytime. Automated botnets attack everyone indiscriminately.
Not all DDoS attacks are the same. Each type requires specific protection. Here are three main categories:
How it works: Floods your communication channel with a massive data stream.
Real example: In May 2025, Cloudflare blocked a record 7.3 Tbps (terabits per second) attack. Imagine trying to pour an ocean into a bottle.
Symptoms:
Protection: CDN + Traffic scrubbing (provider-level filtering)
How it works: Exploits network protocol weaknesses, exhausting server resources.
Example methods:
Symptoms:
Protection: Firewall rules + Rate limiting
How it works: Mimics real users, making requests to your site's heaviest pages.
Real 2025 case: A retail site was attacked with 6 million requests/second. A botnet of 32,381 IP addresses requested pages with large product images. The server couldn't handle content generation.
Symptoms:
Protection: Web Application Firewall (WAF) + Behavioral analysis
| Attack Type | Goal | Detection Difficulty | Average Size 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volumetric | Saturate channel | 🟢 Easy | 1-7 Tbps |
| Protocol | Exhaust server | 🟡 Medium | 100M-1B packets/sec |
| Application | Crash application | 🔴 Hard | 1-6M requests/sec |
💡 From real experience
In most cases, attacks are combined — volumetric + application-layer simultaneously. That's why one-sided protection (CDN only or firewall only) doesn't work. A multi-layered approach at all infrastructure levels is needed.
Fast detection = minimal losses. Here's how to recognize an attack before your site crashes:
1. Log analysis (basic level)
Check access logs for suspicious patterns:
# Top 10 IP addresses by request count
awk '{print $1}' access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10
# If one IP has >1000 requests per minute — it's an attack
2. Real-time monitoring (recommended)
Tools recommended by hosting professionals:
3. AI-based analysis (enterprise)
Machine learning systems analyze behavior:
Example rule for Grafana Alert:
# Alert if traffic >20% above normal level
IF current_traffic > (average_traffic * 1.2) THEN
SEND alert_to_admin
START mitigation_protocol
💡 Practical advice:
"Set alerts for +20% traffic and +30% CPU. This gives you 5-10 minutes to react before the site crashes. Automated monitoring systems can respond in 30-60 seconds, which is critical for fast response."
Protection = multi-layered approach. One tool isn't enough. Here's a proven combination:
What it does: Analyzes incoming traffic and blocks suspicious traffic while allowing real users.
Solutions for different levels:
| Level | Solution | Protection up to |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Firewall rules + Fail2Ban | 10-50 Gbps |
| Mid-level | CDN Free/Pro plans | 100 Gbps |
| Enterprise | Premium CDN + WAF | Unlimited |
How it protects: Distributes traffic across hundreds of servers in different countries. Attacking one server is easy, attacking 200 is impossible.
Example: Your origin server in Germany. With CDN you get site copies in 150+ locations. Attack on Germany? Traffic automatically goes through USA, Japan, Brazil.
Different CDN protection levels:
Many hosting providers offer integration with popular CDN services or have their own content delivery networks, allowing clients to get basic protection "out of the box".
Read more about CDN in our article: "How CDN Works and Does Your Website Need It?"
What it does: Automatically scales resources during an attack.
How modern cloud solutions work:
Example from practice: An e-commerce project was attacked during a sale. The automated protection system:
💡 Why this matters:
"Small sites think: 'They won't attack me, I'm small.' Wrong. 65% of DDoS attacks target small and medium businesses — protection is weaker there, and demanding ransom is easier."
Theory is good. But here's what you can do right now for protection:
Goal: Limit number of requests from one IP.
For Apache (.htaccess file):
# Limit to 30 requests per minute from one IP
<IfModule mod_ratelimit.c>
SetOutputFilter RATE_LIMIT
SetEnv rate-limit 400
</IfModule>
# Block suspicious User-Agents
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (bot|crawler|spider) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [F,L]
For Nginx (nginx.conf file):
# Rate limiting zone
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=ddos:10m rate=30r/m;
server {
location / {
limit_req zone=ddos burst=5;
}
}
For iptables (Linux firewall):
# Limit SYN packets (protection from SYN Flood)
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --syn -m limit --limit 10/s -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --syn -j DROP
# Limit HTTP requests on port 80
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m limit --limit 25/minute --limit-burst 100 -j ACCEPT
⚠️ Important: Test rules in staging environment!⚠️
⚠️ Incorrect configuration can block real users.⚠️
Goal: If one server falls, others pick up the load.
Simple option (DNS Round Robin):
Advanced option (Application Load Balancer):
We recommend using HAProxy:
# Basic HAProxy configuration for load balancing
frontend http_front
bind *:80
default_backend http_back
backend http_back
balance roundrobin
server server1 10.0.0.1:80 check
server server2 10.0.0.2:80 check
server server3 10.0.0.3:80 check
Result: If attack crashes server1, your server2 and server3 keep working.
Goal: Automatically add servers during attack.
How auto-scaling works in cloud platforms:
💡 Important to know:
"Don't wait for an attack to configure auto-scaling. Many cloud providers offer pay-as-you-go models where you only pay for actually used resources during traffic peaks, not for maximum capacity 24/7."
Best defense is being prepared. Here's a 3-level action plan:
Your DDoS Response Playbook should include:
Phase 1: Detection (0-5 minutes)
Phase 2: Isolation (5-15 minutes)
Phase 3: Neutralization (15-60 minutes)
Phase 4: Post-Mortem (after attack)
Critically important: Backup won't save from DDoS, but will save if attack damaged data.
Minimum scheme:
What to look for in a hosting provider:
Conduct DDoS drills every 3 months:
💡 Real case from practice:
"One company ignored recommendations about regular drills. When an attack came at 2 AM — couldn't reach anyone for 40 minutes. Site was down, losses growing. After that they implemented on-call rotations and training. Next attack? Neutralized in 8 minutes."
These mistakes cost businesses millions. Don't repeat them — click on a mistake to learn details:
Reality: 65% of small businesses are attacked precisely because they're small — protection is weaker.
Consequence: No monitoring → attack lasts hours before detection → maximum losses.
Solution: Basic monitoring costs $0. Set up alerts at least for CPU and traffic.
Statistics: 42% of successful DDoS attacks exploit vulnerabilities in outdated software.
Example: Apache 2.4.29 has vulnerability CVE-2018-1312 allowing DDoS with minimal traffic. Patch was released in 2018. But 15% of servers still use this version.
Solution:
Situation: "We have firewall and CDN, we're protected!"
Problem: Nobody checked if it works. During real attack it turns out:
Solution: Stress testing quarterly. Simulate attack and check all systems.
Example: "We use CDN, we're not afraid of anything."
Reality: CDN protects from volumetric attacks great. But if hacker finds your origin IP (real server) and attacks directly, bypassing CDN — you're defenseless.
What happened: E-commerce site with CDN protection. However, hackers found origin IP through old DNS record. Attacked server directly. CDN didn't help. Losses: $200,000.
Solution: Multi-layered protection:
Three real attack stories in 2025 — what went wrong, what worked, and what conclusions you can draw for your business.
Victim: Hosting provider (protected by Cloudflare)
Attack scale:
What saved them:
Lesson: Protecting from hyper-volumetric attacks requires planetary-scale infrastructure. Doing it alone is impossible.
Victim: Major US bank
Attack:
Consequences:
Why protection failed:
Lesson: Enterprise business without cloud-based protection = huge risk. On-premise solutions from 2018 can't handle 2025 attacks.
Company: European electronics online store
Situation:
Attack parameters:
Defense timeline:
Result:
Owner comment:
"We learned about the attack only the next day from the monitoring report. The site worked flawlessly, not a single customer complained. This completely saved our Black Friday."
Lesson: Properly configured automation + behavioral analysis can protect even from complex application-layer attacks without losing legitimate traffic.
DDoS attacks in 2025 — it's not "if" but "when". 358% growth per year shows: the threat is real and growing.
Key conclusions:
What to do right now:
Next 30 minutes:
Today:
This week:
Modern hosting providers offer various protection levels at infrastructure level — from basic firewall to full anti-DDoS solutions. When choosing hosting, pay attention to:
Remember: DDoS protection isn't a one-time setup, but a continuous process of monitoring, updating, and adapting to new threats.
Hostiserver offers reliable solutions for hosting websites and applications. We guarantee high performance, security, and global content acceleration.
With automated monitoring: 30-60 seconds. Systems like Grafana + Prometheus detect traffic anomalies almost instantly.
Without monitoring: From several minutes to hours, depending on how quickly you notice the site isn't working. Often customers call first.
Basic protection (DIY): $0-20/month
Professional protection: $50-500/month
Enterprise: $1,000-10,000/month
Compare: Protection $50/month vs recovery after attack $50,000. Decision is obvious.
YES, small sites are attacked even more often!
2025 statistics:
Typical small business victims:
Myth: "I'm too small to be attacked"
Reality: Automated botnets attack ALL sites indiscriminately, not selecting by size.
Emergency action plan (5 minutes):
Step 1 (30 seconds): Activate attack protection mode
Step 2 (2 minutes): Identify the source
Step 3 (2 minutes): Block attackers
Step 4: Contact hosting provider
DON'T DO:
Recommended schedule:
Quarterly (every 3 months):
Monthly:
After infrastructure changes:
Reality: 78% of companies have NEVER tested their DDoS protection. Then they wonder why nothing works during an attack.
Direct answer: DDoS itself doesn't steal data.
DDoS = Denial of Service. Goal — make site unavailable, not steal.
BUT! Important nuance:
40% of DDoS attacks are diversionary tactics. While your team handles DDoS defense, other hackers:
Real 2024 case: European clinic received DDoS attack. While IT department fought the attack, hackers stole 50,000 patient medical records through another vulnerability. GDPR fine: $2.5 million.
Protection: