Security Beginner

What is DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service)?

An attack that floods a target server or network with traffic from multiple sources to overwhelm it and deny service to legitimate users.

DDoS attacks use thousands of compromised devices (botnets) to generate massive traffic volumes. Types include volumetric attacks (flood bandwidth), protocol attacks (exploit protocol weaknesses), and application layer attacks (target specific services).

Mitigation includes CDN/DDoS protection services (Cloudflare, AWS Shield), rate limiting, geo-blocking, traffic analysis, and over-provisioning. DDoS attacks are common and can target any internet-facing service. Protection should be part of every production architecture.

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Related Terms

Content Security Policy (CSP)

An HTTP security header that controls which resources a browser is allowed to load for a web page, preventing XSS and data injection.

A one-way function that converts input data into a fixed-size string of characters, used for data integrity and password storage.

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)

A browser security mechanism that controls which web domains can access resources from another domain via HTTP requests.

Penetration Testing

An authorized simulated cyberattack on a system to evaluate its security defenses and identify vulnerabilities.

An authorization framework that allows third-party applications to access user resources without sharing passwords.

JWT (JSON Web Token)

A compact, self-contained token format used for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object.

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