DDoS Attacks Are Increasing. When you least expect it, websites can suddenly become painfully slow to react. In the past, you may have had no trouble accessing the same websites. Why did it take so long for the website to load, and what caused users to be unable to use its features? The correct response would be to mention Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks target website design flaws and try to take advantage of them. Due to blockchain-distributed denial of service attacks, websites may experience abysmal performance or completely disappear from the web altogether. Distributed denial of service attacks cannot penetrate blockchain networks because of their nature.
The goal of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault is to cause a website to fail by overwhelming it with traffic. Due to its decentralized architecture, blockchain technology is immune to conventional distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. However, due to decentralization, you can’t entirely rule out the prospect of a blockchain DDoS attack.
The network would not be inundated with pings or transaction requests if hackers were involved. The opposite could be true; they could decide to spam the blockchain with transactions. Eventually, it would cause the network to become congested, making it slower for legal transactions to finish. Please learn more about distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on blockchain and how to counter them.
Working on a DDoS Attack
A definition of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault should be learned before delving into the effects of such an attack on a blockchain network. Any attack that causes abnormally high traffic to a website’s systems is considered a denial of service attack. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks attempt to disable or severely limit the functionality of the targeted website.
DDoS Attacks Are Increasing. Attackers can launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault by taking advantage of architectural flaws in the website. This method usually takes advantage of bandwidth-intensive connections to websites made possible by thousands of bots. Real people would be unable to access the website because the bots would deplete its resources.
Understanding the mechanics of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault is a prerequisite to learning to spot one. There are two leading causes of distributed denial of service attacks. Hackers who demand payment to end the attack may hold the website owner for ransom. In most cases, when companies could not swiftly resolve the vulnerability, attackers demanded ransom payments.
Still, another possible motivation for distributed denial of service attacks is to damage a company’s good name. An adversary with malicious intent can use a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to demonstrate that the target organization lacks the necessary defenses. Discovering practical solutions to the about 20,000 to 30,000 daily DDoS attacks is critical.
Variants of DDoS Attacks
The next important thing you need to learn to explore the impact of DDoS attacks in blockchain networks is the types of DDoS attacks. You can find different kinds of attacks, including layer 4 DDoS attacks that can target different bottlenecks in a website. Some common DDoS attacks include volumetric attacks, application attacks, protocol attacks, TCP connection attacks, and fragmentation attacks. Here is an overview of the impact of the different DDoS attacks on a website.
Volumetric Attacks
Volumetric attacks aim at consuming the bandwidth within the target network or service or between the target network or service and the rest of the internet. The primary objective of volumetric attacks revolves around ensuring congestion. Volumetric attacks consume bandwidth and lead to difficulties connecting websites and the internet.
Application Attacks
Application attacks are also another vital variant of DDoS attacks. You can understand the impact of a DDoS attack on a blockchain network by identifying how application attacks target the application rather than the surrounding infrastructure. One of the most alarming aspects of application attacks is that you would not need robust systems. Hackers can deploy application layer attacks using smaller systems with lower computing power.
Protocol Attacks
Attacks against protocols work by interfering with the network’s capacity to carry out its intended tasks. Hackers may, for instance, transmit data packets missing necessary info that are in motion. The server may have to wait for further data or connection requests due to incomplete packets.
TCP Connection Attacks
The occupation of connections through TCP connections is another prominent variation of DDoS attacks. TCP connection attacks consume all the connections to infrastructure devices, such as application servers, load balancers, and firewalls. Devices that can keep their state across millions of connections may likewise be susceptible to these attacks.
Fragmentation Attacks
Attacks that use fragmentation mainly target data packets that are sent to websites. An influx of incomplete data hits the website all at once. For the system to handle the data or request, it must put the pieces back together. Nevertheless, websites may experience performance drops if they cannot correctly assemble data due to increased packet size.
How Can You Identify DDoS Attacks?
Website or service downtime is a common sign of a distributed denial of service assault. On the other hand, there are alternative signs to look out for, such as slow performance or real increases in website traffic. One way to find complicated security flaws is to conduct penetration tests, which simulate attacks safely and thoroughly. To detect the symptoms of a distributed denial of service attack, you can use some of the most well-known traffic analytics tools for penetration testing.
Suspicious activity emanating from a specific IP range or address can indicate a distributed denial of service assault. Another way to spot a distributed denial of service attack is to look for sudden spikes in traffic to a specific URL or endpoint. Increased traffic from users with similar behavioral profiles, such as web browser version, device type, or geolocation, might also be a form of a distributed denial of service assault. Unusual traffic patterns, including sudden increases at strange times or sporadic spikes, are another telltale symptom of distributed denial of service assaults.
Also, remember that the indicators of a distributed denial of service assault (DDoS) vary in complexity and duration. Intermittent or burst DDoS attacks are possible. More resources are available to generate more volumetric traffic due to the proliferation of powerful computing devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). As a result, malicious actors might create more traffic in less time. Because they barely persist for a minute or two, burst assaults might be hard to spot.
What is DDoS in Blockchain?
After you get the hang of blockchain technology, you can deduce how blockchain DDoS attacks function. Decentralization by design is the most notable feature of blockchain networks. The nodes that make up a blockchain network can number in the hundreds or even thousands; their job is verifying transactions. All the nodes in the network would collaborate to verify the user’s submitted transaction. A conventional distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault could only compromise a small number of nodes due to the system’s distributed nature. But the rest of the network would keep running normally, so it wouldn’t affect anything.
Blockchain networks are impervious to conventional DDoS attacks because of their decentralized nature. However, it does not entirely protect them from DDoS attacks. There is a wide range of blockchain network types regarding resilience against distributed denial of service assaults. Layer 4 DDoS assaults can be traced by investigating various factors.
Considerations include the following: the total network hash rate, the diversity of node clients, the number of nodes responsible for validating transactions in the blockchain, and the confidentiality of the validator schedule. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks might compromise a blockchain network if only a few nodes use the same client. Contrarily, distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults would be more complex to pull off on a blockchain network that uses thousands of nodes to run multiple clients.
How Do DDoS Attacks Manifest in Blockchain Networks?
Distributed denial of service attacks on blockchain networks target vulnerabilities at the protocol layer instead of specific nodes. Clever contract attacks and transaction flooding are typical methods of deploying a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in a blockchain network. An outline of the two main approaches to discovering distributed denial of service attacks in blockchain networks is presented here.
Transaction Flooding
Transaction flooding is a prevalent kind of distributed denial of service attack on blockchain. The majority of blockchain networks use a constant block size. There is a hard cap on the maximum number of transactions a given block can handle. Remember that there are predetermined periods for block creation in a blockchain network. The blockchain’s mempool is where all the pending transactions end up when they don’t fit into the current block. Once a transaction is submitted, it stays in the mempool until it is approved and included in subsequent blocks.
Attackers can launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault on a blockchain by flooding the network with unfinished transactions. This would lead to the mempool not receiving confirmation of valid transactions. The assault would make the blockchain network run more slowly, forcing genuine users to pay a hefty price to validate their transactions.
Smart Contract Attacks
Hackers might also launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault by exploiting intelligent contracts. Only blockchain networks that enable smart contracts would be vulnerable to this kind of assault. The degree of protection against such attacks varies across blockchain networks. As intelligent contracts continue to rise, we can understand why issues like “Why are DDoS attacks increasing in blockchain?” have taken root. Sending a transaction that demands extra computing resources could be a DDoS attack vector for hackers. Consequently, the network could not accept additional valid transactions, which produced outcomes comparable to transaction flooding.
Effect of Blockchain DDoS Attacks
Based on what we know about the two most common DDoS attack vectors for blockchains, it’s clear that these attacks make it impossible to add new transactions. Nevertheless, there are additional indicators that can help you detect a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault on a blockchain network. Additionally, the following may occur as a result of blockchain DDoS attacks.
Each node in a blockchain network receives a block or transaction and then distributes a copy to all of its neighbors. Each node replicates the identical transaction in different ways. Congestion would set in as the network bandwidth would be depleted due to the increased volume of transactions caused by transaction flooding.
A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on a blockchain can be seen in how it causes nodes to fail. The sheer volume of transactions strains the nodes’ memory and processing power, increasing the likelihood of a crash.
How Can You Prevent Blockchain DDoS Attacks?
Raising the level of decentralization is the most excellent way to protect a blockchain network from distributed denial of service assaults. Conversely, decentralization would be a time-consuming process. Consequently, you must include appropriate safeguards to protect the blockchain network from distributed denial of service attacks. A sufficient amount of storage space, bandwidth, and processing power must be available to every node in the network. Additionally, you need to find the blocks that are prone to using resources and remove any possible spam transactions from them.
Conclusion
Companies looking to blockchain technology for digital transformation are understandably worried about the increasing number of distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults on the network. Simultaneously, remember that complete protection from blockchain DDoS attacks is unattainable. Finding solutions to distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults is as simple as understanding how blockchain DDoS attacks function and how to recognize the symptoms.
Transaction flooding and assaults on intelligent contracts are two ways bad actors could launch distributed denial of service attacks. However, by constructing secure smart contracts, blockchain networks can be protected from DDoS attacks. Additionally, nodes optimized to handle DDoS attacks better regarding storage, procin terms ofwer, and network bandwidth can be relied upon.
