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Enhanced TCP Protection Available Now

  • June 5, 2024
  • 2 min read
Enhanced TCP Protection Available Now

We are pleased to announce enhanced TCP protection as part of Gcore DDoS Protection! The new system automatically detects attacks and monitors connections, stopping attacks without causing interruptions to legitimate users. Read on to learn why this upgrade matters and how to take advantage of it.

What Is a TCP DDoS Attack?

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is one of the most essential and widely used protocols on the Internet, accounting for about 90% of all internet traffic. Protecting TCP traffic and defending against TCP-based DDoS attacks is crucial for maintaining the security and reliability of online services and infrastructure.

The most common type of DDoS attack that targets TCP is called a SYN flood. The SYN cookie method offers a popular and effective defense against these attacks. But when it comes to other TCP DDoS attacks, like ACK flood and RST, SYN cookie doesn’t always offer optimal protection.

Gcore TCP DDoS Protection 2.0

This is where our enhanced TCP protection comes into play. We use two key mechanisms to detect less common TCP attacks, ensuring we can mitigate them immediately:

  • Configurable thresholds for parameters such as the total number of packets per second, the number of SYN, RST, and other packets per second
  • The ratio of SYN packets to ACK packets per second

To prevent the disruption of existing sessions when activating DDoS protection, we continuously monitor newly established TCP sessions both before and during an attack. The difference during an attack is that we enable verification using SYN Cookies. Successfully deflecting attacks without breaking connections simply requires using information about established and authorized sessions to block all other packets. This ensures that legitimate users can continue their existing sessions or start new ones even while the attack is in progress. By leveraging these methods, our enhanced TCP protection effectively deflects all types of TCP DDoS attacks, providing a robust defense mechanism to our Gcore DDoS Protection customers.

This new approach allows us to effectively deflect all types of TCP DDoS attacks, offering an even more robust defense mechanism to our Gcore DDoS Protection customers.

Get Proven DDoS Protection with Gcore

Gcore DDoS Protection provides reliable mitigation against all types of DDoS attacks, including TCP. Benefits include the following:

  • Massive network capacity: With over 148 Tbps of network capacity and a global network that continually learns from millions of internet properties, Gcore defends against the largest and most sophisticated attacks.
  • Accuracy: Near-zero false positives ensure that legitimate traffic is not mistakenly blocked.
  • High availability: An SLA of 99.99% guarantees almost uninterrupted service and reliable protection.

Try Gcore DDoS Protection for free

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