DDoS Attack Essence

Core idea simple: overwhelm target with more traffic than it can handle. Like too many people squeezing into tiny shop door - real customers cannot enter. Distributed means attack comes from thousands of sources (compromised IoT devices/routers/PCs/cameras).

Attack types: Bandwidth consumption (UDP/ICMP flood fill pipe). Protocol abuse (SYN flood exploits TCP handshake weakness). Application layer (HTTP flood looks like legitimate requests, hardest to defend).

Response Solutions

Option 1 Cloud Vendor DDoS Protection (recommended): Aliyun/Tencent Cloud/Huawei Cloud all offer DDOs products. Basic protection free (<5 Gbps). Advanced (paid): tens of Gbps to Tbps level. High-defense IP/CDN routes traffic through protected nodes before reaching origin.

Option 2 CDN Plus Protection: CDN naturally distributes traffic across nodes. If you already need CDN for acceleration, security comes almost free.

Option 3 Professional Service: Cloudflare, Aliyun Premium DDoS, Tencent Dayu. Cost: few thousand to tens of thousands RMB/day depending on capacity and duration.

Real Case

A local life service platform in 益阳 Ziyang was DDoS-d during promotion evening peak (7-9 PM). Traffic jumped from normal 50 Mbps to ~2 Gbps. Site completely down during prime hours. Response: contacted cloud vendor, activated high-defense IP (15 min ~500 RMB/day). Switched DNS to high-defense IP (global propagation 10-30 min). Attack lasted ~6 hours then stopped. Total loss: ~125 RMB protection fee plus ~2 hours partial downtime during DNS switch. Post-incident: purchased DDoS protection package (~3,000 RMB/year, 20 Gbps base coverage).