Question

Preventing DDoS attacks without Cloudflare?

Hello all!

I plan on also using cloudflare, but it’s not difficult to resolve the internal/host IP and then attack that directly. Any way to protect myself as most as possible in addition to the frontend cloud flare service?

Thanks!


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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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November 1, 2023
Pinned Answer

Hello there,

Quick update here. I’m excited to share that DigitalOcean has introduced a new feature in response to the valuable feedback we’ve received from users like you: DigitalOcean DDoS Protection:

https://www.digitalocean.com/products/ddos-protection

Here are some key points about this new offering:

  1. Cost: DigitalOcean DDoS Protection is available at no additional cost. That’s right, it’s a free service for all users!

  2. Coverage: The protection extends to a range of DigitalOcean resources including:

    • Droplets
    • Kubernetes
    • Managed Databases
    • Load Balancers
    • Reserved IPs
  3. Protection Layers: This service provides protection primarily at the Network (layer 3) and Transport (layer 4) layers of the OSI model. Please note that Application layer (layer 7) DDoS Protection is currently not supported.

  4. Latency Concerns: One of the standout features of this service is that mitigation takes place entirely within the DigitalOcean network. This means that data traffic doesn’t leave our network for mitigation, ensuring that your applications experience no additional latency.

  5. Overall Benefit: DigitalOcean DDoS Protection is an always-on service designed to defend your DigitalOcean cloud resources against a range of generalized, network-layer DDoS attacks. This ensures that your apps and websites run smoothly, without the threat of potential disruptions from such attacks.

Best,

Bobby

How is it possible to resolve host IP, when you’re using CloudFlare? That’s the major use-case for using the service, is to hide host IP address. Of course, you can choose to use their DNS-only service, which will work like any other regular DNS service - meaning it’ll show host IP address.

I used the following setup: Let’s Encrypt on my server. Strict SSL on Cloudflare Cloudflare-set SSL (Https) for all requests.

So…as the OP says, your origin IP is still unprotected. To offer some protection, I set up Cloudflare Authenticated Origin pull: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/204899617-Authenticated-Origin-Pulls

It still doesn’t shield you from DDoS, but it helps a bit.

Here’s a discussion I had on the Cloudflare blog: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-ransom-an-offer-you-can-refuse/

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