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AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

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Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#31
post #12
post #4

Alternative guide, use CloudFlare and hide origin address. Most of AWS advices (like autoscaling) will help only a bit, but can cost a lot (lots of ec2 machines serving bogus requests).

Best way to defend against an L7 DDoS is to have the origin hidden, and to cache everything at a large number of geographically distributed PoPs. This helps in 99% of cases, and where it doesn't it is simply because there is a resource that cannot be cached and that the edge must revisit the origin for. This is especially true whenever that resource is expensive for the origin to provide (involves database lookups an…

What's the limit at which CloudFlare will start billing you at a "enterprise rate" instead of $20 / month? That bandwidth can't be free forever...

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#32
post #7

AWS' competition like OVH and many quality VPS providers offer _free_ (or very cheap) DDOS protection.

If the attack is over 10Gbps good luck with that... This stuff is best effort.

I don't think so, 2years ago they mitigated 180gbps on one client.

https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/386563685805617152/pho...

https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/ddos-attack-management.x...

Also everyone here talk about L7, cloudflare ect.. but a lot of application are pure TCP/UDP based so you can't cache anything.

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#34
post #25

Kind of agree with all those who say that Cloudflare is still a better option. But how do you tackle their lack of automatic failover ? https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200168916-C... "the system currently does not have the functionality to automatically select the next available server if one of the servers in the group goes down"

We're fixing that.

Quick question: Would this include global load-balancing across different regions? We use cloudflare for a few different services but balancing across regions requires a complicated setup with yet another DNS/traffic layer in between, would be great if this is something CF could offer (or maybe it does at the Enterprise level)?

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#35
post #29
post #25

Kind of agree with all those who say that Cloudflare is still a better option. But how do you tackle their lack of automatic failover ? https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200168916-C... "the system currently does not have the functionality to automatically select the next available server if one of the servers in the group goes down"

The simplest option I'm aware of is to point CloudFlare to your load balancer, and have it handle removal of failed backend nodes. The only big downside is that on AWS you can't have an elastic IP associated with an elastic load balancer, so you either have to run your own HA haproxy/nginx/whatever cluster in EC2 in order to have a single IP to point CloudFlare to. If you can live with a subdomain you can point that…

CloudFlare has CNAME flattening so you can still have the apex point to a CNAME and CF will automatically keep up to date with the correct IP using the TTLs and broadcast an A record correct to RFC standards.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169056-C...

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#36
post #18
post #3

So, basically, pull out the pocketbook and we'll hook up our vacuum to it. Attempting to outscale a DDOS (the primary mitigation method presented by Amazon) is going to DDOS your bank account. Personally, I'd rather see some more recommendations along the lines of the "VPC can minimize potential attack surfaces".

Sounds like there could be awesome features here. Remotely triggered black holes for VPC? Elastic Firewall? Not crazy about firewalls in general, but they would help in the case that you are paying for data-out.

Firewalls are useless in a DDOS attack.

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest option I'm aware of is to point CloudFlare to your load balancer, and have it handle removal of failed backend nodes. The only big downside is that on AWS you can't have an elastic IP associated with an elastic load balancer, so you either have to run your own HA haproxy/nginx/whatever cluster in EC2 in order to have a single IP to point CloudFlare to. If you can live with a subdomain you can point that…

CloudFlare has CNAME flattening so you can still have the apex point to a CNAME and CF will automatically keep up to date with the correct IP using the TTLs and broadcast an A record correct to RFC standards. https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169056-C...

Do you know if CloudFlare's apex CNAME support works coupled to Route53's health-check-based RRDNS? I know that AWS's own DNS reflects the health-check-based changes to the round-robin pools instantaneously, but I have no idea what sort of TTLs they emit.

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#38
post #7

AWS' competition like OVH and many quality VPS providers offer _free_ (or very cheap) DDOS protection.

Which VPS providers are you referring to?

I know from personal experience that, Digital Ocean, the largest VPS provider null routes your VPS IP for 3 hours minimium for even the tiniest of DDoS's.

I doubt most of the smaller VPS providers can afford to absorb DDoS's even if they don't have overly restrictive policies like DO.

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the attack is over 10Gbps good luck with that... This stuff is best effort.

I don't think so, 2years ago they mitigated 180gbps on one client. https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/386563685805617152/pho... https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/ddos-attack-management.x... Also everyone here talk about L7, cloudflare ect.. but a lot of application are pure TCP/UDP based so you can't cache anything.

[deleted]

Re: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency [pdf]

#40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the attack is over 10Gbps good luck with that... This stuff is best effort.

I don't think so, 2years ago they mitigated 180gbps on one client. https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/386563685805617152/pho... https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/ddos-attack-management.x... Also everyone here talk about L7, cloudflare ect.. but a lot of application are pure TCP/UDP based so you can't cache anything.

I'd bet that 'one client' getting the ~200gbps DDoS has a massive monthly bill (likely hundreds/thousands of servers) so they're happy to mitigate short term DDoS.

Most dedicated server providers won't go that far if you have a handful of servers.

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