In November 2023, a major customer in the gaming industry was targeted with a massive 1.1 Tbps DDoS attack. Fortunately, since they had Gcore DDoS Protection, the attack was mitigated through effective response strategies. Gamers weren’t impacted at all.
An Unusual Attack Mechanism
This UDP flood DDoS attack took an unusual form. Random UDP source ports were used in an attempt to evade conventional filtering mechanisms. In addition, the attackers employed spoofed source IP addresses to mask their origin.
This was a DDoS of high magnitude, peaking at 1.1 Tbps, as the graph below shows.
How Gcore Stopped the Attack
Gcore’s DDoS Protection stopped this DDoS attack in its tracks, ensuring zero impact on gamers. Here are some key elements of our robust protection system:
- Dynamic traffic shaping: We dynamically adjust traffic rates to mitigate the attack’s impact without affecting legitimate traffic. We use rate limiting and adaptive thresholds to prioritize legitimate traffic and throttle malicious packets.
- Anomaly detection and quarantine: Our machine learning models perform behavioral analysis to identify and isolate suspicious traffic patterns in real time. When anomalies are detected, automated quarantine mechanisms divert affected traffic to isolated segments for further analysis when anomalies are detected.
- Regular expression filters: Custom filter rules based on regular expressions block malicious payloads without disrupting legitimate traffic. We fine tune regularly to ensure optimal protection without false positives.
- Collaborative threat intelligence: We actively participate in industry threat intelligence exchanges. Insights from peers and real-time threat feeds inform our defense strategies, enabling rapid adaptation to emerging attack vectors.
Conclusion
Major, 1+ Tbps DDoS attacks present a growing cyberthreat, with gaming companies a frequent target. With Gcore’s DDoS Protection, you can rest assured that your valuable resources are immune to even the most powerful DDoS attacks. Get in touch to discover how our proven expertise can secure your business’ assets.
