As we grow older, we realize that there are troubles in life that are unavoidable, and that our control over the course of events is, at the very least, rather limited. But one of the most effective, common and aggressive attacks against websites, the notorious DDoS attack, is the kind of trouble that can be reduced dramatically, simply, and at no cost.
Since "October 7th" and even more so since the campaign against Iran, the scope of cyberattacks against Israeli websites has skyrocketed. This is a wave of attacks that spares no one: websites of small businesses, online stores, personal blogs and even simple landing pages — every digital asset that "speaks" Hebrew or is identified with Israel becomes a "worthy" target, and one of the most common and aggressive attacks is the DDoS attack. When you hear about a large organization (health funds and hospitals, authorities, well-known institutions) that stopped functioning for several days (and sometimes much longer), it is usually such attacks, even if they won't admit it publicly.
So what exactly is a DDoS attack?
When someone visits your site, their browser sends a "request" to the server — a request to display the home page, submit a form, run a search or upload an image. Every such action is essentially communication between the visitor and the server. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack mimics exactly this pattern, except that instead of a reasonable number of requests from human visitors, the site is flooded with tens or hundreds of thousands of requests sent simultaneously, sometimes from around the world, all of them looking legitimate. The site simply cannot withstand the load — it becomes extremely slow or crashes completely.
What makes these attacks so common is their simplicity and immediate effect: no sophisticated break-in or password theft is required, and such attacks can also be ordered for paltry sums across the dark web. It is an ideal attack for politically or ideologically motivated attackers, and it is no surprise that it is so widespread in the current period, and the truth is – it is hard to believe that the situation is about to change in the near future.
The solution – pointing the site's domain through a service such as Cloudflare
But this problem has a very effective solution, and at some of the leading hosting companies (SiteGround, uPress, Kinsta) it is available and accessible, with no technical understanding required, through the management interface and at no charge. A service like Cloudflare, known mainly for speeding up sites (CDN), actually also offers effective protection from DDoS attacks. When we set our site's domain to be routed through them, there is an option to configure a suitable protection mode, and their system absorbs the attack through a global network of servers — and for the most part manages to keep the site available.
I'm afraid to hand over the management of my DNS records to an external party
Like any service, managing DNS records is not free of risks, and Cloudflare is not immune either. However, it is one of the world's leading companies in the field. It serves millions of sites – including public institutions, giant corporations and sensitive organizations – and it is built to manage world-class traffic in a transparent, secure and automatic way. Considering the size of the company, the level of trust it enjoys and its technological capabilities, it is one of the most stable and reliable solutions, certainly for "regular" websites.
To sum up: There are different types of DDoS attacks with varying levels of sophistication, scope and complexity, but for a very large share of sites – blogs, stores, content sites and brochure pages – the free solution offered by a service like Cloudflare provides a very significant layer of protection. The service is available through the management interface of hosting companies such as uPress, and with the press of a button and very simple settings it significantly reduces the risk of your site being taken down – at no cost and without the need for technical knowledge.
For most site owners, this is a small step that can save a lot of grief. Consider it seriously as soon as possible.
