What is a DDoS Attack & How Do DDoS Attacks Work

Cybersecurity threats keep growing, and among the most disruptive are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

These attacks can take websites offline, disrupt services, and cause real financial and reputational damage. In this article, we explain what a DDoS attack is, how it works, what recent data shows, and what steps you can take to protect your online assets.

What is a DDoS Attack?

1. Definition:

• A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.

2. Key Characteristics:

• Distributed: Unlike a traditional Denial of Service (DoS) attack, which typically uses a single source, a DDoS attack comes from many compromised devices, often spread across different countries.
• Denial of Service: The goal is to stop legitimate users from reaching a service by exhausting the target's resources, such as bandwidth, server memory or connections.

How Do DDoS Attacks Work?

1. Botnets:

• Creation of Botnets: Attackers build a network of infected devices, known as a botnet, by spreading malware that turns these devices into "zombies" under their control. Poorly secured routers, IP cameras and other internet-connected devices are common targets, as are hijacked cloud servers.
• Command and Control: The attacker uses command and control (C&C) servers to coordinate the botnet, directing the infected devices to send a flood of requests to the target at the same time.

2. Types of DDoS Attacks:

• Volume-Based Attacks: These aim to consume the target's bandwidth, often measured in bits per second (bps). Common methods include UDP floods, ICMP floods and amplification attacks that abuse open DNS or other servers.
• Protocol Attacks: These exhaust server resources or network equipment such as firewalls and load balancers. Examples include SYN floods and Ping of Death.
• Application Layer Attacks: These target specific applications, such as a login page or search function, often measured in requests per second (rps). HTTP floods are a typical example. They are harder to spot because each request can look like a normal visitor.

3. Attack Execution:

• Launching the Attack: The attacker instructs the botnet to begin sending a high volume of traffic to the target.
• Overwhelming the Target: The flood of traffic exhausts the target's resources, causing slowdowns or complete outages.
• Sustaining the Attack: Some attacks run for hours or days. Others last only seconds but are large enough to knock a site offline before manual defenses can react.

DDoS Attacks in 2026: What the Data Shows

DDoS attacks are not a rare event. Cloudflare's DDoS threat report for the first half of 2026 shows the scale:

• About 5,343 network-layer DDoS attacks per hour were mitigated in H1 2026, around 128,000 per day.
• 805 attacks exceeded 1 Tbps (one terabit per second) in Q2 2026, a more than six-fold increase over the previous quarter.

Attacks of that size are far beyond what a single shared hosting server or office internet connection can absorb. The takeaway for small and mid-sized businesses is clear: protection needs to sit upstream, in a network built to absorb floods, not only on your own server.

Why are DDoS Attacks Dangerous?

1. Service Disruption:

• DDoS attacks can make websites, apps and APIs unavailable, cutting off customers and causing downtime.

2. Financial Loss:

• Downtime means lost revenue, especially for e-commerce stores during sales campaigns and for businesses that take orders or bookings online.

3. Reputational Damage:

• Frequent or long outages erode customer trust. Customers who can't reach you may simply buy from a competitor.

4. Collateral Damage:

• DDoS attacks can also affect shared infrastructure. If your site is on shared hosting, an attack on a neighbouring site can slow yours too.

5. Smokescreen for Other Attacks:

• While your team is busy with an outage, attackers may try other intrusions, such as login attempts or data theft. Keep monitoring security logs during and after an attack.

How to Protect Against DDoS Attacks

1. Implement Traffic Filtering:

• Use firewalls, a web application firewall (WAF), and intrusion detection or prevention systems (IDS/IPS) to filter out malicious traffic before it reaches your servers.

2. Leverage CDN and Load Balancers:

• A Content Delivery Network (CDN) spreads traffic across a large global network, and load balancers distribute it across multiple servers. Both make it much harder to overwhelm a single origin server. Hide your origin server's IP address behind the CDN so attackers can't bypass it.

3. Enable Rate Limiting:

• Rate limiting controls how many requests a client can make in a given time, reducing the impact of application layer attacks on login, search and checkout pages.

4. Deploy DDoS Mitigation Services:

• Use a specialized, always-on DDoS mitigation service that detects and blocks attacks automatically. Given how short and large modern attacks can be, automated mitigation matters more than manual response.

5. Prepare an Incident Response Plan:

• Write down who to contact (hosting provider, CDN, developer), how to switch on stricter protection modes, and how to update customers, for example through WhatsApp or social media, while the site is down. Review the plan regularly.

6. Keep Software and Devices Updated:

• Patch your CMS, plugins and servers, and change default passwords on routers and cameras. This protects your site from other attacks and keeps your own devices from being recruited into a botnet.

Conclusion

DDoS attacks are frequent, and the largest ones keep getting bigger. They cause disruption, financial loss and reputational damage.

By putting your site behind a CDN with DDoS protection, filtering and rate limiting traffic, and preparing a clear response plan, you can keep your website and services available when attacks happen.

Stay Secure with Our Expert DDoS Protection Services!

Softhat builds and maintains websites for businesses across Pakistan with CDN, firewall and rate limiting set up from the start. Explore our web development services, or book a free strategy call to review how well your site is protected.