By: Shannon Murphy, Greg Young March 20, 2024 Read time: 2 min (589 words)
On February 26, 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the official 2.0 version of the Cyber Security Framework (CSF).
What is the NIST CSF?
The NIST CSF is a series of guidelines and best practices to reduce cyber risk and improve security posture. The framework is divided into pillars or “functions” and each function is subdivided into “categories” which outline specific outcomes.
As titled, it is a framework. Although it was published by a standards body, it is not a technical standard.
https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework
What Is the CSF Really Used For?
Unlike some very prescriptive NIST standards (for example, crypto standards like FIPS-140-2), the CSF framework is similar to the ISO 27001 certification guidance. It aims to set out general requirements to inventory security risk, design and implement compensating controls, and adopt an overarching process to ensure continuous improvement to meet shifting security needs.
It’s a high-level map for security leaders to identify categories of protection that are not being serviced well. Think of the CSF as a series of buckets with labels. You metaphorically put all the actions, technology deployments, and processes you do in cybersecurity into these buckets, and then look for buckets with too little activity in them or have too much activity — or repetitive activity — and not enough of other requirements in them.
The CSF hierarchy is that Functions contain many Categories — or in other words, there are big buckets that contain smaller buckets.
What Is New in CSF 2.0?
The most noteworthy change is the introduction of Governance as a sixth pillar in the CSF Framework. This shift sees governance being given significantly more importance from just a mention within the previous five Categories to now being its owna separate Function.
According to NIST the Govern function refers to how an organization’s, “cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy are established, communicated, and monitored.” This is a positive and needed evolution, as when governance is weak, it often isn’t restricted to a single function (e.g. IAM) and can be systemic.
Governance aligns to a broader paradigm shift where we see cybersecurity becoming highly relevant within the business context as an operational risk. The Govern expectation is cybersecurity is integrated into the broader enterprise risk management strategy and requires dedicated accountability and oversight.
There are some other reassignments and minor changes in the remaining five Categories. CSF version 1.0 was published in 2014, and 1.1 in 2018. A lot has changed in security since then. The 2.0 update acknowledges that a review has been conducted.
As a framework, the CISO domain has not radically changed. Yes, the technology has radically evolved, but the greatest evolution in the CISO role really has been around governance: greater interaction with C-suite and board, while some activities have been handed off to operations.
So How Will This Impact Me in the Short Term?
The update to the NIST CSF provides a fresh opportunity to security leaders to start or reopen conversations with business leaders on evolving needs.
The greatest impact will be to auditors and consultants who will need to make formatting changes to their templates and work products to align with version 2.0.
CISOs and security leaders will have to make some similar changes to how they track and report compliance.
But overall, the greatest impact (aside from some extra billable cybersecurity consulting fees) will be a boost of relevance to the CSF that could attract new adherents both through security leaders choosing to look at themselves through the CSF lens and management asking the same of CISOs.
MARCH 28, 2024 15 MIN. READ WRITTEN BY Manuel Sabban
This article was originally published on 30 April 2021 in the Linux Journal.
Updated: 14 March 2024
With the launch of Security Engine 1.0.x, we enabled the Security Engine to function as an HTTP REST API, allowing it to gather signals from other Security Engines.
In this guide, I will guide you through the steps to set up the CrowdSec Security Engine across multiple servers, where one server will serve as the parent and two additional machines will forward alerts to it.
Sharing cybersecurity incidents across machines using the CrowdSec Security Engine is a highly effective strategy to enhance collective security defenses. By leveraging CrowdSec’s capability to distribute remediations among connected machines, each machine benefits from real-time updates about new threats detected elsewhere in the network.
Architecture
In the diagram above, the parent Security Engine, designated as server-1, will be set up as the HTTP REST API, commonly known as the LAPI (Local API). This engine will be in charge of storing and distributing the gathered signals. Remediation is managed through the Remediation Components, which depend on the LAPI offered by server-1. It’s crucial to understand that mitigation can occur independently from detection.
Server-2 and server-3 are designated as internet-facing machines that will host services available to the public and will be known as the child Log Processors. On these servers, we will install CrowdSec Security Engine and Remediation Components, which will interact with the server-1 LAPI.
Note: The phrase “child Log Processors” refers to a CrowdSec Security Engine that operates with its LAPI turned off. For more information on this, consult our Taxonomy Update Article.
We strongly encourage you to explore the CrowdSec Hub to learn about the extensive range of services the Security Engine can protect. This platform showcases the diverse capabilities of the Engine in securing everything from web applications to databases against cyber threats.
Architecture Decisions
I chose a postgresql backend for the server-1 LAPI to achieve greater stability in database read and write operations. Nevertheless, depending on your operational scale, you might discover that the default SQLite with WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) enabled meets your needs, if so you can skip section 1b.
Prerequisites
To follow this tutorial, you will need the following:
Two internet-facing Ubuntu 22.04 machines hosting services.
One Ubuntu 22.04 machine.
A local network connection between the Parent and Child machines.
Step 1b (Optional): Using postgresql on Parent server-1
Install the PostgreSQL package using the apt package manager.
sudo apt install postgresql
Next, transition to the postgres Linux user and then connect by executing the psql command.
sudo -i -u postgres
psql
You can set up the database and create an authorized user using the commands below. Replace with a password you select, you must keep it within the single quotes.
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE crowdsec;
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# CREATE USER crowdsec WITH PASSWORD ‘[PASSWORD]’; CREATE ROLE
postgres=# GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE crowdsec TO crowdsec;
GRANT
Now, we’ll set up the Security Engine to utilize this newly created database as its backend. This requires updating the db_config section in the /etc/crowdsec/config.yaml file.
During the installation of the Security Engine, the local machine was configured to use the SQLite database. To switch to the newly set up postgres database, you will need to regenerate the credentials and then proceed to restart the Security Engine.
sudo cscli machines add -a –force
sudo systemctl restart crowdsec
Step 1c: Expose LAPI port
To enable communication between the LAPI and the child Log Processors/Remediation Components, it is necessary to adjust the LAPI’s settings to accept connections from external sources, since its default configuration binds it to the machine’s loopback address (127.0.0.1). This adjustment can be made by editing the /etc/crowdsec/config.yaml configuration file and changing the specified settings.
api:
server:
listen_uri: 10.0.0.1:8080
In the mentioned setup, we adjust the settings to listen on the 10.0.0.1 interface on port 8080. Should you wish to listen on several interfaces, you can change this to 0.0.0.0 and implement firewall rules to permit specific connections.
First, lets register the Log Processor to the LAPI server using the following command
sudo cscli lapi register -u http://10.0.0.1:8080
Ensure you adjust the -u flag to suit your network. Utilize the IP address if it’s static, or opt for the hostname if your network allows it.
Next, we’ll turn off the local API on the Security Engine, turning it into a Log Processor. This action is taken because the API won’t be utilized, which will conserve system resources and avoid occupying a TCP port unnecessarily.
To achieve this, we can disable the API in the configuration with:
api:
server:
enable: false
Step 2c: Validate the registration request on LAPI
Since we used the cscli lapi register on the child Log Processor we must validate the request on server-1 via the following commands:
sudo cscli machines list
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NAME IP ADDRESS LAST UPDATE STATUS VERSION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dc6f34b3a4994700a2e333df43728701D0iARTSQ6dxiwyMR 10.0.0.1 2021-04-13T12:16:11Z ✔️ v1.0.9-4-debian-pragmatic-a8b16a66b110ebe03bb330cda2600226a3a862d7
9f3602d1c9244f02b0d6fd2e92933e75zLVg8zSRkyANxHbC 10.0.0.3 2021-04-13T12:24:12Z 🚫
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From this output, it’s evident there’s a new machine that hasn’t been validated yet by the 🚫 within the status column. We need to manually validate this machine to ensure the LAPI recognizes which machines are authorized to transmit signals.
Note: If you don’t see a new machine marked with a 🚫 in the status column, make sure you are executing the command on the LAPI server.
Make sure to change the argument following validate to correspond with the new machine name displayed in the list output.
Step 2d: Restart the child Log Processor service
On the child Log Processor machine you can run the following command to restart the service:
sudo systemctl restart crowdsec
Then, for each machine you wish to connect, repeat step 2. In our case, we will perform this action twice, once for each Ubuntu machine.
Step 3: Setting up Remediation
Now, it’s important to configure remediation measures for your internet-facing servers since merely running the Log Processor does not implement enforcement actions. In this article, we’ll focus on setting up the Linux firewall Remediation Component. For additional remediation options, be sure to explore the extensive list available in the CrowdSec Documentation.
Step 3a: Generating API key on LAPI
First, we’ll create API token on the LAPI server by executing the following command:
sudo cscli bouncers add server-2-firewall
Api key for 'server-2-firewall':
02954e85c72cf442a4dee357f0ca5a7c
Please keep this key since you will not be able to retrieve it!
I used server-2-firewall as the name for the key, but you can choose any name you prefer. It’s crucial to select a descriptive name for the key to facilitate future management, especially if you need to revoke a key due to a token compromise.
Step 3b: Install the Remediation Component
IPtables firewall is among the most commonly used on Linux, so we’ll proceed to install the Component that interacts with it, using the apt package manager.
sudo apt install cs-firewall-bouncer-iptables
Once the Component is installed, we will edit the configuration under /etc/crowdsec/bouncers/crowdsec-firewall-bouncer.yaml to point towards the LAPI
Ensure you modify the api_url to align with your LAPI address and update the api_key to the one generated by the previous command. Remember, you can use either the IP address or the hostname.
Once you have altered the configuration, let’s restart the firewall Remediation Component.
sudo systemctl restart crowdsec-firewall-bouncer
Then, for each Remediation Component you wish to connect, repeat step 3. In our case, we will perform this action twice, once for each firewall on the Ubuntu machines. Make sure to alter the naming scheme of the API key.
A few closing thoughts
This guide illustrated the process for establishing a multi-server Security Engine setup. While this example utilized three servers, the architecture allows for easy expansion. The resource consumption on server-2 and server-3 remains minimal since the majority of operations are directed towards server-1, facilitating straightforward scalability of the system:
Register and validate additional Security Engines on the LAPI server
Add any additional Remediation Components
As previously stated, there’s no requirement for the Remediation Components and Security Engines to be installed on the same server. This implies that the Security Engine should be installed at the location where logs are produced, whereas the Remediation Component can be deployed at any desired location.
It’s important to note that this configuration comes with certain limitations:
The communication between Security Engines occurs via unencrypted HTTP, which is suitable for a local network but not secure for internet use. However, the CrowdSec Security Engine supports the use of HTTPS for these interactions.
This article does not delve into monitoring or alerting. Nonetheless, the Security Engine supports comprehensive monitoring capabilities via Prometheus, and you can find more detailed information about it in this article.
Having both the CrowdSec LAPI and PostgreSQL on server-1 creates a single point of failure, potentially leading to delays in threat response should any issues arise with the server.
Now you may be wondering — how do I build a highly available multi-server CrowdSec setup? We will have a dedicated article on that in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
We are always more than happy to receive your feedback! Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on our community platforms on Discord and Discourse.
MARCH 28, 2024 10 MIN. READ WRITTEN BY Manuel Sabban
This article was originally published on 31 August 2021 in the Linux Journal.
Updated: 14 March 2024
Welcome to the second part of our tutorial on how to set up and secure a multi-server CrowdSec Security Engine installation. In the first part, I walked you through the setup of CrowdSec Security Engines across multiple servers, with one server serving as the parent and two additional machines forwarding alerts to it.
In this part, I will address security issues posed by clear HTTP communication in the previous multi-server Security Engine installation. To solve this, I propose establishing the communication between Security Engines over encrypted channels. This solution allows server-2 or server-3 to trust the server-1 identity and avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Using self-signed certificates
Create the certificate
First, you need to create a certificate. This can be achieved with the following one-liner.
For now, the Security Engine is not able to ask for the passphrase of the private key when starting. So, you have the choice to decipher the private key by hand each time you start or reload the Security Engine or store the key unencrypted. In any way, to strip the passphrase, you can use the following:
openssl rsa -in encrypted-key.pem -out key.pem
Then, the unencrypted key file can be safely deleted after the Security Engine is started.
Configure the Security Engine to use a self-signed certificate
On server-1 you need to configure the Security Engine to use the generated certificate. As seen below, the tls.cert_file and tls.key_file option in the api.server section of the following /etc/crowdec/config.yaml excerpt is set to the generated certificate file.
api:
server:
log_level: info
listen_uri: 10.0.0.1:8080
profiles_path: /etc/crowdsec/profiles.yaml
online_client: # Crowdsec API credentials (to push signals and receive bad
tls:
cert_file: /etc/crowdsec/ssl/cert.pem
key_file: /etc/crowdsec/ssl/key.pem
On the client side, configuration changes happen in two files. First, modify /etc/crowdec/config.yaml to accept self-signed certificates by setting the insecure_skip_verify to true.
You also need to change HTTP for HTTPS in the /etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml file in order to reflect the changes. This small change has to be done on all three servers (server-1, server-2 andserver-3).
Note: Please keep in mind that this LAPI configuration has to be done on server-1 as well if it’s used as a log processor too.
Side note: Obviously using self-signed certificates doesn’t provide any confidence over ownership on the LAPI server. Servers using the service (server-2 or server-3 in this setup) are still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, but at least this setup provides encrypted communications. That’s the reason why the InsecureSkipVerify option is needed.
Using a Certificate Authority-issued certificate
Let’s Encrypt, or services like Amazon ACM, can be leveraged to workaround the InsecureSkipVerify, by issuing a certificate for a fully qualified domain name that can be added to /etc/hosts or to a local DNS server. /etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml can then be filled with this specified fully qualified domain name.
This indeed works and prevents the InsecureSkipVerify option from being set. This ensures that communication between client and server can’t be tampered with as long as the DNS configuration can be trusted, but should still be considered as a workaround.
Using a PKI
The process of configuring and managing an SSL Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) falls outside the scope of this tutorial, but I highly recommend you take a look at the official OpenSSL documentation. The simple PKI scenario is enough for this Security Engine setup.
Following the OpenSSL documentation, there are a few things worth mentioning.
To be usable in our CrowdSec TLS scenario, the certificate requests have to be issued with a subject alternative name corresponding to the IP of the Crowdsec LAPI server. This can be done by positioning the SAN environment variable when invoking OpenSSL for the certificate request (see step 3.3 in the OpenSSL simple PKI scenario).
The public part of the root and the signing certificates (bundle file created at step 4.5 in the OpenSSL simple PKI scenario) have to be added to the local certificate store before starting the CrowdSec Security Engine. In this setup, this is required to connect to the LAPI server. There’re many ways to do so, golang sources specify where certificates are expected, or you can use the SSL_CERT_FILE environment variable in the systemd service file to specify where to find the certificate when launching the Security Engine.
Updated note on CrowdSec and TLS authentication
After the first publication of this article, we added a new feature to the Security Engine you are now able not only to secure communication over TLS but also ensure authentication with certificate. In the official documentation you can find a great example that shows how TLS authentication can be done using certificates between Security Engines or between Security Engine and Remediation Component.
Conclusion
This article gives some highlights on how to secure communications between different CrowdSec Security Engine installations. The considered use case is Security Engine installations in a private network, but this can also be deployed on a public network with communication over the internet. In such a case, a third-party certificate would easily do the trick.
Depending on the needs, I proposed three different ways to achieve secure TLS communications between your Security Engines — using self-signed certificates, using certificates issued by a Certificate Authority, and using an SSL Public Key Infrastructure.
The first scenario, with self-signed certificates, only applies if you want to ensure encrypted communication with no need for authentication. The second scenario proposed may only be considered as a workaround when you have the possibility to modify local DNS resolutions. The third proposed scenario is the most complicated but would fit in most use cases and may be the way to go when security concerns are high.
I hope this tutorial comes in handy. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on our community platforms on Discord and Discourse.
MARCH 19, 2024 10 MIN. READ WRITTEN BY Emanuel Seemann
Among the 29,000 vulnerabilities published as a CVE in 2022, CVE-2022-22954 is one of the more dangerous vulnerabilities, with a CVSS base score of 9.8. Recently there has been a significant uptick in exploitation attempts detected by the CrowdSec Network from bad actors located in China. To swiftly remediate this issue, we added the exploit as a rule for The CrowdSec AppSec Component.
This article serves as a reminder for security professionals to patch your VMware workspaces. Here I will also share some insights into the new attackers using this vulnerability.
The exploit
Since its introduction in 1999 there have been over 200,000 vulnerabilities published in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) framework. As the number of vulnerabilities published each day grows, cyber security professionals are overwhelmed with figuring out whether a given vulnerability is actually at risk of being exploited. By leveraging CrowdSec’s large threat intelligence network, we know that most of these vulnerabilities very rarely lead to widespread adoption by threat actors. We suspect that this is mostly because proof-of-concept attacks are rarely published, which means that attackers don’t know a priori how difficult it will be to exploit the vulnerability in practice.
In the case of CVE-2022-22954, however, the exploit, as explained very succinctly by the Rapid7 team back in 2022, is simple and small enough to fit into a tweet. The Rapid7 team also showed that this vulnerability could be chained with other vulnerabilities of VMware products to gain a root shell for remote code execution. This showed that the exploit was both easy to use and significantly powerful in practice, which gave it a very high CVSS score.
The exploit itself is a classic case of Server-Side Template Injection (SSTI). Templating engines are systems used to insert user data into static HTML websites. For example, the web developer can write the template:
And for the user John Doe, it will then show up as:
In an SSTI, the user is able to get the server to render a user-submitted template. The templating engine used by VMware, Apache FreeMarker, allows a developer to execute system commands within the template using the freemarker.template.utility.Execute function. This function call is, therefore, often used in template injection attacks. In the specific case of CVE-2022-22954, templates could be injected into the deviceUdid parameter of the /catalog-portal/ui/oauth/verify endpoint.
To detect this, the CrowdSec Security Engine looks for calls to the utility.Execute function at this endpoint. Note that modern versions of FreeMarker allow sandboxing of the Execute function to prevent template injections from being easily exploitable.
A new surge in exploit attempts of the CVE-2022-22954
Usually, high CVSS scores cause defenders to patch their systems quickly and attacks to fall off as the attack surface rapidly decreases. This has been the case with log4shell as well. After a while, the real attacks drop away and, in turn, are replaced by a vast number of security scanners. This means that it’s not unusual to still see signals for old outdated vulnerabilities. To avoid such scanners polluting our threat intelligence, we maintain curated filters for the addresses of most scanner companies.
The following chart depicts the number of unique IPs reported for CVE-2022-22954 each day over the past 3 months:
Unique IPs Reported for CVE-2022-22954
The chart is split into two phases. A stable phase for 2 months, followed by a growth phase starting on the 19th of February 2024. The first phase is the baseline noise generated by vulnerability scanners. The second phase is the new surge in attacks. The same trend can be seen in the number of signals and the number of unique Security Engines reporting attacks.
Signals and Security Engines Reporting CVE-2022-22954
Most of the attackers participating in this new attack wave have previously not been seen by the CrowdSec network. A good 40% of them come from Chinese IP addresses. Overlap analysis also reveals that the attackers attempt multiple similar attacks. Of note here should be the http-probing scenario which detects attackers that get served a significant number of 404/403 responses in a short time span.
Combined with the fact that most of these IPs were previously unseen, we suspect that this might be an attempt to build a new botnet using very common vulnerabilities, not all of which we currently have detection scenarios for.
Scenario Overlap
We provide the following top 3 Indicators of Compromise (IoC) for this new wave of attacks:
In response to this new wave of attacks, we have added detection for this exploit to our Web Application Firewall (WAF) using a rule in the CrowdSec AppSec Component. CrowdSec WAF users are now protected against future attempts by these attackers. If you are not using the CrowdSec WAF solution yet, make sure to activate the AppSec Component in your Security Engine. You can find more information in the CrowdSec documentation.
In addition to the new AppSec Component rule, about 30% of the malicious IPs performing CVE-2022-22954 exploitation attempts are by now part of the CrowdSec Intelligence Blocklist, and considering the ramping intensity of these attackers, more will be added in the coming days.
Want to stay ahead of the curve? Proactively block these IPs and don’t take any chances with the IPs massively exploiting the CVE-2022-22954 vulnerability potentially reaching your systems.
MARCH 7, 2024 15 MIN. READ WRITTEN BY Emanuel Seemann
One of the big lessons we learned from collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data at CrowdSec is that cyberattacks are not distributed equally over the internet.
There are Autonomous Systems (AS) — think internet service providers or hosters — and IP ranges that harbor significantly more criminal activity than others. This insight prompted us to aggregate the signals we receive not only by IP address but also by IP range and Autonomous System.
In this article we provide an example of what this looks like in practice and how these new aggregations are used by us internally to improve our blocklist offerings. However, we first need to explore a crime scene to understand these insights.
Capturing petty criminals
The following table presents a sample of IPs that recently participated in http-path-traversal-probing attacks. These attacks are quite simplistic. They aim to get a web server to reveal files outside of the sitemap by trying to escape paths and walking backward along the file tree using ../.
While most modern web servers are not vulnerable to such attacks, the attackers show up directly in the log even on failed attempts which makes this a good Indicator of Compromise (IoC) for the Crowdsec Security Engine to investigate.
Now, good detectives will have already noticed something afoot here. But in case you didn’t notice, the table below draws your attention to certain IPs.
While some IPs in this table seem to come from all over the internet, the IPs highlighted all share the first 3 sections of their IP address. What this means is that these IP addresses originate from the same neighborhood or IP range of the internet. To further explore this strange coincidence, we need to learn a little bit about how the internet works.
IP ranges — The neighborhoods of the internet
At the core, an IP address is a representation of a 32-digit binary number. Wikipedia has a nice graphic to show how each of the 4 numbers of the dot-decimal notation corresponds to an 8-digit binary part of the IP address.
Usually, these IP addresses are not owned by individuals but by internet service providers and big technology companies, which then assign them to their customers and servers. To simplify the who-owns-what question, the service providers are not given lists of single IPs but so-called IP ranges.
IP ranges are blocks of consecutive IP addresses. They are specified by the number of digits of the binary address that they have in common. So, a /31 range for a given address includes all IPs that have the same 31 first bits as this address. As an IP address is only 32 bits long that means that a `/31` range contains exactly two IPs.
Generally, the lower the number on the range, the higher the number of IPs in it. At CrowdSec, we mainly consider range /24 neighborhoods, which are all the IPs that share the same 24 first bits. This is a convenient range size as it is still fairly small at 256 IPs per range, but also because the boundary falls right on one of the decimals in dot-decimal notation. So, the range 172.16.254.0/24 contains all the IPs from 172.16.254.0 to 172.16.254.256. This makes /24 an extremely useful range to look at.
Fighting organized crime
With the crash course in internet protocol and IP ranges finished, let’s turn our attention back to the matter at hand and recall the table of petty criminals seen earlier.
With your newly gained knowledge of the internet protocol, you can now identify that some of the criminals seen in the table operate from the same neighborhood of the internet.
So, it’s not difficult to realize that we might not be dealing with petty criminals who do some path traversal on the side here, but we are facing an organized crime network operating from the XXX.234.140.0/24 neighborhood of the internet.
Properly detecting such bad neighborhoods and taking the appropriate measures against these perpetrators is vital to our goal of always providing our users with blocklists that contain verified malicious IPs to help them proactively protect their systems from cyberattacks.
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To generate the CrowdSec Intelligence Blocklist, we have built a fairly sophisticated system of rules that evaluate an IP on a diverse set of metrics to ultimately decide whether it gets added to the blocklist. This system is called the Expert System. The best way to understand the functionality of the Expert System is to imagine a judge ruling in a court.
Every IP is put to a trial with evidence supporting the case. The judge (Expert System) has a code of law (CrowdSec ruleset) within which it has to decide whether to convict the suspect. For validation, we have a lawmakers’ convention (internal meeting) every week where we inspect the rulings and change the laws if needed.
Staying within this law analogy, we face similar issues as real courts when fighting organized crime. Each individual IP in this range might not be criminal enough on its own to get convicted for a big sentence, but as an organization, it is clear that there is significant abuse coming from this range. Similar to real courts, we can keep playing whack-a-mole and jail abusers who cross the line for petty crimes, but to put a real dent into the criminal organization, we need a bigger mallet. In the real world, this big mallet is called the RICO Act — in the CrowdSec cybersecurity court, it is the Range Reputation System.
Introducing the IP Range Reputation System
The IP Range Reputation System is an aggregation of stats on individual IPs at the level of their /24 range. That means that for every /24 range, we track the following:
The number of IPs from this range we have seen in reports from Security Engines
The number of IPs from this range that landed in the CrowdSec Intelligence Blocklist
The average duration of any given IP remaining in our data lake
The trust score of the Security Engines reporting this IP
The behaviors identified for IPs in this range
The CrowdSec Data
Explore CrowdSec’s fail-proof approach to tactical intelligence and learn how CrowdSec guarantees unmatched data curation.Learn more
We then use this information to build an organized crime case. The case is built on two components.
Neighborhood reputation: This is based on how many other IPs have already been reported and how many of them have landed in the CrowdSec Intelligence Blocklist.
Attacker behavior: How the behavior of this specific attacker compares to the other IPs in its range. The analogy for this is that while a pickpocket and a bike thief might operate in the same neighborhood, as long as they do their separate things, there is no reason to suspect that they are part of the same organized crime unit.
These two components are then weighted, scored, and fed to the Expert System as additional evidence. If an IP is convicted of operating within a criminal network, it gets into the CrowdSec Intelligence Blocklist significantly faster, turning this simple system into an effective large mallet to bleed cybercriminals of their most valuable resource — fresh IP addresses.
The Range Reputation System we built alongside this feature powers our insights in the Majority Report and allows us to act on emerging threats with confidence even when there is little primary information to go on.
Get your hands on the IP Range Reputation feature
The IP Range Reputation feature is now available in our CTI API to help incident response teams and threat researchers gain improved visibility in low-information environments and act fast and decisively against threats, even in situations where the defenders are outnumbered.
To use the IP Range Reputation feature today, simply sign in to your CrowdSec Console account or sign up for free if you don’t have an account yet. Then navigate to the Settings page to generate a CTI API key.
Equipped with your API key, you can get started by querying the API using curl or any other tool. If you don’t have any interesting IP addresses at hand, you can always find an interesting selection under https://app.crowdsec.net/cti.
Similar to our ratings of individual IPs, the range reputation comes as both a score ranging from 0 to 5 and as a single label of either malicious, suspicious, or known. For further information on our CTI API, including exhaustive documentation and a swagger portal, check out our CTI API documentation.
The CrowdSec team is working on expanding and improving the capabilities of the IP Range Reputation feature, so stay tuned as we’ll be sharing more updates on this soon!
Running a WooCommerce store demands more than just listing your products and waiting for sales to happen. It requires a proactive approach to maintenance, optimization, and engagement to ensure that every aspect of your store functions smoothly and efficiently. From the careful crafting of product attributes to secure checkout processes, each element plays a critical role in the overall success of your online business.
With a plethora of tools at your disposal, it can be overwhelming to navigate the options and identify what will best support your store’s unique needs. As we dive into the various tools and strategies to keep your WooCommerce store running smoothly, remember that the goal is not just to maintain but to excel.
Enhancing store performance
A well-performing WooCommerce store is the cornerstone of a successful eCommerce business. As your store grows, so does the complexity of managing its performance. Here, we’ll explore key tools and practices to enhance your store’s speed, efficiency, and overall performance, ensuring a seamless experience for your customers.
Database optimization
One of the most critical yet overlooked aspects of maintaining a high-performing WooCommerce store is database optimization. Over time, your store’s database can become cluttered with old product revisions, outdated orders, and unnecessary data, leading to slower loading times and a sluggish site experience. Tools like WP-Optimize provide an easy-to-use solution for database cleanup and optimization. By regularly clearing out this digital detritus, you can ensure your store operates at peak efficiency, maintaining swift navigation and quick access to product information for your customers.
Image optimization tools
Visuals play a crucial role in eCommerce, but high-quality images often come at the cost of file size, which can significantly slow down your site. Leveraging tools to optimize WordPress images is essential for balancing quality and performance. Plugins like Smush or SEO Image Optimizer automatically optimize product images without degrading quality, ensuring your site remains fast and visually appealing. This not only enhances the user experience but also positively impacts your store’s SEO, as page load speed is a key ranking factor for search engines.
Streamlining order processing and delivery
Efficient order processing and timely delivery are pivotal in ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty in eCommerce. This section delves into tools and plugins that can significantly streamline these aspects of your WooCommerce store, from the moment an order is placed to when it reaches the customer’s doorstep.
Automated order printing
In the bustling environment of an eCommerce business, automating mundane tasks can save valuable time and reduce the risk of errors. For WooCommerce store owners, automatically printing orders as they come in can be a game-changer, ensuring that every order is promptly prepared for shipping and enhancing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. This automation allows store managers to focus on more strategic tasks rather than getting bogged down with manual order processing.
Delivery date plugins
Giving customers the power to choose their preferred delivery date not only enhances the shopping experience but also helps in managing logistics more effectively. Delivery date plugins for WooCommerce enable customers to select dates that work best for them at checkout. This level of customization improves the likelihood of successful first-time delivery, thereby reducing the costs and hassles associated with missed deliveries. Moreover, it allows businesses to plan their dispatch schedules better, ensuring that peak times are managed more efficiently and resources are allocated appropriately.
Boosting conversions and sales
Improving your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate can be achieved through various means, from simplifying the checkout process to using upselling and cross-selling techniques. Tools like Checkout Field Editor allow you to customize the checkout experience, removing unnecessary fields to streamline the process and make it as quick and painless as possible for customers. Additionally, integrating plugins that suggest related products or offer last-minute deals can tempt customers to add more to their carts, increasing the average order value.
An effective email marketing strategy can also boost conversions. For example, when promoting a webinar with an email sequence, crafting a well-timed sequence of emails can nurture leads and gently guide them toward registration. Starting with an announcement email, followed by reminder emails that add value and build anticipation, can increase engagement and conversion rates. Tools like Mailchimp integrate seamlessly with WooCommerce, enabling you to automate these sequences and tailor your messaging based on customer behavior and preferences, thereby enhancing the chances of conversion.
Enhancing user experience
The success of an eCommerce store largely hinges on the user experience (UX) it provides. A seamless, engaging, and intuitive UX can significantly boost customer satisfaction, repeat business, and word-of-mouth recommendations. In this section, we’ll cover tools and practices that can enhance the UX of your WooCommerce store, from collaborative content creation to managing contact form inquiries efficiently.
Content collaboration
High-quality, compelling content is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. Tools like MultiCollab offer a WordPress plugin that facilitates content collaboration directly within the Gutenberg editor, allowing teams to work together more efficiently on product descriptions, blog posts, and other content. This not only improves the quality of your store’s content but also ensures it’s consistently updated and relevant, enhancing the overall user experience by providing valuable information and engaging narratives that guide customers through your store.
Managing spam
Effective communication channels are vital for customer service and feedback, but spam can significantly hinder these processes. Implementing robust spam filters and captchas for your contact forms can streamline customer inquiries, ensuring that genuine messages are promptly addressed while keeping the nuisance of spam at bay.
Improving searchability
A critical aspect of optimizing user experience in your WooCommerce store is making it easy for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for. Clear navigation and efficient product search mechanisms can significantly reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. Carefully defined product attributes play a vital role in enhancing product discoverability. Attributes such as size, color, brand, and material not only help in organizing your inventory but also improve the shopping experience for customers. By using a plugin to implement filters based on these attributes, you enable customers to quickly narrow down their search to find their desired products effortlessly.
Security and maintenance
Maintaining the security and proper functioning of your WooCommerce store is not just about protecting your data and assets; it’s about safeguarding your customers’ trust. A secure and smoothly running store enhances user confidence and encourages repeat business. This section will cover essential practices and tools for ensuring your WooCommerce store remains secure and operates without hitches, focusing on malware removal and the importance of regular maintenance.
Malware removal tools
The threat of malware and cyber-attacks is a constant concern for online businesses. Malware can compromise customer information, disrupt transactions, and tarnish your store’s reputation. Utilizing robust malware removal tools is critical for detecting and eliminating threats before they cause harm. Plugins can provide comprehensive security solutions, offering firewall protection, malware scan, and threat removal features specifically designed for WordPress sites. Regularly scanning your WooCommerce store for vulnerabilities and ensuring all security patches are up-to-date can prevent potential breaches and keep your business and customers safe.
Regular maintenance checks
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when it comes to eCommerce. Regular maintenance checks are essential for identifying and addressing issues before they escalate into serious problems. This includes updating WordPress and WooCommerce to the latest versions, ensuring all plugins are compatible and current, and checking for broken links or outdated content. Establishing a routine maintenance schedule helps in preempting issues that could disrupt your store’s operations, ensuring a smooth and reliable shopping experience for your customers.
Conclusion
Overall, the journey to a well-maintained WooCommerce store is multifaceted, involving everything from database optimization and image compression to malware protection and content collaboration. By leveraging the tools and strategies discussed, store owners can address the myriad challenges that come with running an online business.
Remember, the goal is not just to maintain your store but to continuously improve it. The eCommerce landscape is ever-evolving, and staying ahead requires an adaptable approach and a willingness to embrace new technologies and methodologies. Engaging with your customers, understanding their needs, and providing them with a seamless shopping experience will set your WooCommerce store apart in a crowded marketplace.
As you implement these tools and strategies, monitor their impact on your store’s performance and customer satisfaction closely. This data-driven approach will help you refine your tactics, ensuring your store not only runs smoothly but thrives. With dedication and the right tools at your disposal, your WooCommerce store can achieve remarkable success, grow its customer base, and secure a prominent place in the digital marketplace.
Are you concerned about the security of your WordPress website? Do you want to restrict login access to only trusted IP addresses? Whitelisting IP addresses is an effective way to enhance the security of your WordPress login page. In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at whitelisting within Shield Security PRO, exploring its dual applications:
Whitelisting your entire site to ensure exclusive access for approved users.
Whitelisting users from Shield Security Pro’s Bad Bot detection system to ensure that specific IP addresses are recognized as legitimate, reducing false positives and preventing these users from being blocked from the site.
While shielding against bad bots protects site access for legitimate users, full-site whitelisting takes security even further. Full-site whitelisting, set up through Shield Security PRO’s full-site lockdown feature, ensures that your site won’t load at all for non-whitelisted users. This is an intense security measure that may serve a vital role for businesses with strict security and access requirements.
We’ll walk you through the pros and cons of both whitelisting approaches and how to set them up, while helping you decide whether they’re necessary and practical for your business.
Let’s get started!
Understanding full-site IP whitelisting and its importance in WordPress security
Although it is too restrictive for public-facing platforms, full-site IP whitelisting is great for contexts where stringent access control is vital. Industries like finance, government, and healthcare, dealing with Sensitive Personal Information (SPI) or Private Personal Information (PPI), benefit from this heightened security. However, these are far from the only sites that can benefit from full-site whitelisting
For instance, although an eCommerce site catering to the public will find full-site IP whitelisting impractical, it could make sense for a wholesale retailer that only works with pre-approved buyers. It can also be useful for corporate intranets, which are limited to employee access only, or websites used to manage private security systems.
The decision to implement a full-site whitelist shouldn’t be taken lightly. Site owners must carefully weigh the pros and cons and remember that the extreme nature of IP whitelisting makes it fully incompatible for general public facing businesses and platforms.
Benefits and drawbacks of full-site whitelisting in WordPress
There are many benefits and drawbacks to full-site whitelisting that users should consider before setting this up on their site. For example, some benefits include that this gives you strict access control, ensuring that only approved users can interact with the site. It’s a highly effective security measure that can easily safeguard sensitive and confidential information.
It’s a great tool for building a secure environment that provides a safe and secure place for authorised individuals to access sensitive data. It’s a good way to balance security and accessibility when working with highly sensitive information, such as for financial transactions or healthcare.
One major drawback to consider, however, is that it’s time-consuming and resource-intensive to get a full-site whitelist set up. It also needs continuous attention and maintenance. It can be inconvenient for users, since it restricts them to a specific computer and location. There are workarounds like virtual machines, but they introduce additional complexities as well.
Lastly, no single measure, even whitelisting your whole site, is a foolproof solution against cyber attacks, as it does not provide complete protection. For example, you still have basic cybersecurity measures to keep in mind, such as the risks associated with remote workers logging in on shared family devices. However, the whitelisting itself can lull users into a false sense of security, which may lead to lapses in other vital security practices.
Step-by-Step guide to implementing full-site lockdown in WordPress
Shield Security PRO provides an advanced Site Lockdown feature that transforms your website into a whitelist-only accessible domain. When activated, this setting renders your site inaccessible to everyone except those IP addresses listed on your site’s bypass/whitelist list.
🚨Warning! Before enabling this feature, it’s crucial to add your own IP address to the bypass list to prevent locking yourself out.
Understanding the Site Lockdown Feature
In Shield Security PRO, the Site Lockdown feature simplifies the process of creating a whitelist-only site. It is also a useful solution to deploy during attacks, helping to limit access t the site until the situation can be fully assessed.
Shield Security Pro streamlines the process by doing all the heavy lifting for you, leaving little room for error. To enable the Site Lockdown feature, you need to:
Access your WordPress dashboard.
Navigate to ShieldPRO from the left-hand menu.
Go to Tools → SiteLockdown.
Check the box to whitelist your own IP address, if you haven’t already done so. Do not skip this – otherwise you will be locked out of your own site.
Review and confirm you understand the warnings and risks associated with this process.
Select “Lockdown The Site”
With this setting turned on, your site will only be accessible to users you have whitelisted using Shield Security PRO IP bypass rules, referenced earlier in the article.
Although the Shield Security PRO Site Lockdown feature makes full-site whitelisting a breeze, you can alternatively restrict access to your website by supplying access rules within your .htaccess file (for Apache servers). This method is totally different from Shield Security PRO’s Lockdown capability and requires technical expertise. So, if you’re in any doubt, we recommend hiring a developer to help with the manual approach.
Here is how to manually restrict access to your WordPress site:
Use a plugin like UpdraftPlus or your hosting control panel to back up files and databases.
Accessing the .htaccess file:
Connect to the server using an FTP client (like FileZilla) or through the hosting control panel.
Navigate to the root directory (usually public_html, www, htdocs, etc.).
Modify the.htaccessfile:
Locate and download the.htaccessfile.
Open it in a text editor.
Add the following lines at the top to restrict access to specific IP addresses:
Order deny,allow Deny from all # whitelist Your First IP address Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # whitelist Your Second IP address (if any) Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
📝Note on code: Replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with the actual IP addresses.
If you are using Apache 2.4 or newer, it’s recommended to use the new Require directive for access control, which is more flexible and straightforward.
# whitelist Your First IP address Require ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # whitelist Your Second IP address Require ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
📝Note on code: Replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with the actual IP addresses. The Require directive is part of Apache’s authorisation features, allowing you to specify which users or systems can access your site.
Once you have done this, the changes should be saved and uploaded again to the server (replacing the old .htaccessfile).
Whitelisting IP addresses in the Shield Security PRO plugin
When using Shield Security PRO, safeguarding your website involves understanding and managing the ADE, which detects bad bot signals, defending your site from malicious entities.
However, this system, while effective, can occasionally result in false positives – legitimate users being mistakenly flagged as bots.
To prevent the accidental blocking of known users, you can whitelist IP addresses with Shield Security PRO. By adding these trusted users to the IP Bypass list, you ensure uninterrupted access while maintaining a robust defence against malicious bots. Here’s how to do this:
Identify the IP address of the user you want to whitelist. Online tools, like Shield Security PRO’s IP address finder, can help users find this information.
Go to your WordPress dashboard and select ShieldPRO from the left-hand menu to open the Shield Security PRO dashboard.
Within Shield Security Pro’s dashboard, go to IP Rules and select the gear icon in the top right-hand corner.
Choose Create new IP rule to initiate the whitelisting process.
Enter the IP address or range you want to whitelist.
Provide a clear and memorable label, such as “Whitelist”, for easy identification.
Select Add to bypass list to confirm the whitelisting.
Once an IP address is whitelisted, the ADE will bypass it completely. However, exercising caution is important as this practice may pose security risks, particularly if the whitelisted IP address becomes compromised. It’s wise to periodically review your IP whitelists and remove any entries that are no longer required.
Maintaining your whitelist: Regular reviews and updates
One of the most important things to remember is that whitelisted addresses, once approved, are never blocked, regardless of their onsite activity.
Unlike Shield’s Automatic IP Blocking system which keeps your IP rules list lean for performance purposes, there is no automated pruning of whitelisted IP addresses.
The potential risks associated with outdated whitelist entries shouldn’t be overlooked.
Unauthorised access through excessive permissions could pose significant security threats. That’s why due diligence in the form of regular security audits are crucial to ensure authorised users retain the necessary access and unauthorised entities are promptly removed.
Here is our recommended approach to whitelist maintenance:
Review: Periodically review the existing whitelist to identify any outdated or unnecessary entries. Always verify the legitimacy of each whitelisted IP address.
Periodic checks: Conduct periodic checks, aligning with your usual website security audit schedule. Ensure that the whitelist aligns with the current needs of your website.
Secure your WordPress site with Site Lockdown today
While Site Lockdown may not suit every website, it’s invaluable for security sensitive industries like finance, government, and healthcare, where stringent cybersecurity measures are vital.
IP whitelisting helps streamline access for some users, and it can be complex without a plugin to manage it for you, but Shield Security PRO simplifies the process.
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, powering millions of websites. However, its popularity makes it a target for hackers. One common vulnerability that hackers exploit is the TimThumb vulnerability.
In this post, we will discuss what the TimThumb hack is, how it affects your WordPress site, and provide a step-by-step guide on how to rectify the hack yourself.
Understanding the TimThumb vulnerability in WordPress
TimThumb was a PHP code snippet used in WordPress themes and plugins to dynamically resize images to predefined dimensions to simplify the process of generating thumbnails on the fly. Before WordPress introduced this functionality into Core, TimThumb was an extremely popular script and included with many WordPress themes. Unfortunately, this script became a focal point for a significant cybersecurity concern within the WordPress community.
In 2011, a significant security incident unfolded as hackers exploited a vulnerability in TimThumb, a widely-used script at the time for dynamic image resizing in WordPress. This issue became particularly widespread due to several unique circumstances:
Lack of dynamic image resizing in WordPress
Early versions of WordPress couldn’t resize images dynamically on its own. But when mobile-responsive design gained popularity in the early 2010s, TimThumb came to the rescue. It allowed users to upload an image once and automatically get properly sized images for different screen sizes, even on mobile devices. As a result, TimThumb became a widely used solution in themes.
Prevalence in paid themes
Many premium WordPress themes incorporated TimThumb, bundling the script with their designs. Given that automatic theme updates were not yet widely adopted, users were required to manually update their themes. This posed a challenge as users often neglected updates, leaving vulnerable versions of TimThumb in use for extended periods.
Delayed awareness and remediation
The security issue with TimThumb allowed hackers to upload malicious PHP files, injecting harmful code into websites. Due to the lack of awareness, delayed updates, and the absence of automated security solutions like Shield (which wasn’t available in 2011!), the impact of the hack persisted for years, affecting a substantial number of WordPress sites.
Improved automatic updates
Notably, such a widespread and prolonged vulnerability would be less likely to occur in the present day. Modern WordPress versions benefit from improved automatic update mechanisms. If a security issue were to arise, updates are promptly issued, enabling site owners to quickly secure their websites.
The widespread effect was enhanced by the lack of updates made by website owners. This vulnerability shows us the importance of robust cybersecurity measures for the broader WordPress user base.
Though modern cybersecurity measures have substantially mitigated the TimThumb vulnerability’s impact, it remains an active threat. In fact, at least 56,606 websites are still using TimThumb to this day, including government websites.
💭Did you know? The most exploited plugin on this list, responsible for a huge 36% of WordPress hacks, was Contact Form 7.
The TimThumb script is no longer officially maintained or supported. Yet, it continues to persist on users’ sites, especially if they use outdated plugins and themes. This poses a threat, as TimThumb might unknowingly find its way onto your page, leaving you vulnerable.
Why did this happen in the first place?
Bugs are found in code all the time. When Ben Gillbanks, who initially wrote the TimTumb script, became aware of it, a fix was issued. This is, generally speaking, normal. The issue was that the update didn’t reach end-users because of how developers distributed WordPress themes at the time (as there were no automatic updates), so un-updated sites are still around now.
Ben told us:
When TimThumb was developed, WordPress lacked image thumbnails, prompting its creation to enhance website aesthetics, initially intended for premium WordPress themes. Unexpectedly, its popularity grew as other theme shops adopted the image resizing script.
The first indication that something was wrong was when my own site was defaced. Someone had changed my footer to link somewhere else. Unsure of the cause, I reverted it and ensured everything was up to date. Fortunately, this was before hackers started introducing backdoors, so it didn’t happen again.
A couple of days later, reports emerged that TimThumb was hacked, and my heart sank. I felt super guilty and spent a lot of time over the next few days trying to make it more secure.
Ben hosted TimThumb on Google Code, as GitHub wasn’t an option at the time. TimThumb was open source, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg got personally involved, introducing Ben and developer Mark Maunder. A fixed version was released, but without automatic updates in WordPress, it didn’t reach end-users with the scale as you’d see now.
Ben shared some insight into the root of the issue:
The vulnerability arose from a few different factors:
I had allowed resizing of external images, which meant files from other websites could be loaded.
I enabled data caching for those external files without performing any file type checks to ensure they were images, not code.
Detecting the hack: Tools and techniques
The TimThumb exploit from 2011 is still an issue today. As discussed above, over 50,000 sites still use the script. One can assume that a smaller share of these are using the vulnerable version, but with TimThumb no longer maintained and WordPress offering dynamic image resizing, there’s little need for using it in 2024 or beyond.
For those with older websites or looking for absolute certainty about their site’s security, certain steps can be taken to assess and address any lingering use of TimThumb:
Access files.
Use your FTP client, Secure Shell, or your hosting provider to access your website’s files.
Backup.
Before proceeding, create a backup of your site files to avoid data loss.
Search for TimThumb files.
Thoroughly check every file in your root directory. Look specifically for files labelled timthumb.php or thumb.php.
📝Please note: Manual file inspection is time-consuming and liable to human error. We recommend exploring alternative methods, such as using vulnerability scanner plugins.
While there are several plugin options on the market, Shield Security PRO is a great choice due to its extensive suite of customisable features, particularly the Anti-Bot Detection Engine.
Using Shield Security PRO for early detection and prevention
Using Shield Security PRO is a great way to detect and prevent TimThumb hacks on WordPress sites. It has a vulnerability scanner that identifies known vulnerabilities, including the TimThumb script, allowing users to remove potential threats. The scan is also powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dubbed MAL{ai}, the scanner can identify threats it’s never even seen before with 80-90% accuracy.
Automatic file scanning is a key feature that compares your website to the default WordPress install to pinpoint files that shouldn’t be present. Shield Security PRO also takes charge of updating themes and plugins while flagging any out-of-date plugins, ensuring your site stays fortified against potential exploits.
The faster vulnerabilities – like the use of the TimThumb script – are detected, the less opportunity hackers have to exploit and insert malicious code. Shield Security PRO provides a defence mechanism, enhancing your website’s resilience against emerging threats.
Steps to recover your WordPress site post-hack
Discovering a TimThumb vulnerability – or worse, an exploit – can be stressful. To help you with recovery, follow these steps:
Assessing the damage
Compare your site files and databases to the original versions to identify any discrepancies. Use tools like Shield Security PRO’s Malware Scanner to detect malicious code. Look for signs of unauthorised access, unexpected content changes, or alterations to your website’s structure.
Here’s how to scan on Shield Security PRO:
Go to your WordPress dashboard and press ShieldPRO.
Click Scans.
Click the settings icon in the right-hand corner.
Press Run Manual Scan.
Press Run Scans Now.
From here, you will be notified if anything suspicious is occurring.
Cleaning up the infection
Change all passwords associated with your WordPress site, including admin, FTP, and database passwords. This helps secure your site and prevent further unauthorised access.
Ensure all elements of your WordPress site are up-to-date. This includes the core software, themes, and plugins. Regular updates patch security vulnerabilities, reducing the risk of future attacks.
Remove malicious injections from your databases and files. While technical details can be complex, it’s crucial to ensure your site is entirely free from compromised code. Note that manual cleanup may be risky for non-technical users; consider using specialised tools for a safer and more efficient cleanup.
If available, restore your WordPress site from a clean backup. It is vital to regularly back up your site as a precautionary measure. There are a variety of WordPress backup plugins available to automate this process.
Communicating the incident
If user data might have been compromised, inform your site users about the breach. We recommend creating a draft communication statement in advance to save time and minimise stress. Include information like the type of attack, compromised data, impact on performance, and assurances about resolving the issue.
🔎 An example email for communicating a breach:
⚠️ You may want to consult legal professionals when drafting and releasing such communications, to ensure compliance with laws like GDPR.
Subject: Important notice regarding recent security incident on [Your Website Name]
Dear [Website Users],
I hope this message finds you well. We are writing to inform you about a recent security incident that has come to our attention. Your trust in our website’s security is of utmost importance to us, and we want to be transparent about the steps we are taking to address the situation.
What happened? Our website recently experienced a security breach, and we believe it is our responsibility to notify you. The breach involved [brief description of the type of attack, e.g., unauthorised access or a specific vulnerability]. We want to assure you that we are taking immediate action to rectify the situation.
Was there any compromised data? While we are still conducting a thorough investigation, it is possible that some user data may have been compromised. This may include [specify the type of data that might have been affected, e.g., usernames, email addresses, etc.]. We want to be transparent with you about the extent of the incident and assure you that we are doing everything in our power to safeguard your information.
Will this impact performance? We understand the importance of secure data. The breach may have had some impact on the performance of our website. We are actively working to address any performance issues and enhance our security measures to prevent future incidents. We want to assure you that our team is working diligently to resolve the issue. We have taken immediate steps to secure our website and are implementing additional security measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. Your security and privacy are our top priorities.
What can you do? As a precautionary measure, we recommend changing your password on our website. Additionally, if you use the same password on other sites, consider updating it there as well – and to avoid using the same password across multiple sites in the future. We also advise monitoring your accounts for any suspicious activity.
We are committed to keeping you informed about the progress of our investigation and the actions we are taking. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at [provide a contact email or phone number].
We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this incident may have caused. Your understanding and cooperation during this time are greatly appreciated.
Thank you for being a valued member of our community.
After the recovery, take time to analyse how the hack occurred. Understanding the vulnerability can help you prevent future attacks.
Securing your WordPress website against TimThumb and other vulnerability attacks
While TimThumb is no longer actively used in WordPress themes or plugins, it could be lingering in out-of-date sections of your site’s code. Regularly updating and removing previous instances of TimThumb in your WordPress site significantly reduces the risk of its exploits.
Paul Goodchild, creator of Shield Security PRO, says, “If you’re performing regular maintenance on your WordPress sites, the likelihood that you’ll be susceptible to a vulnerability is slim-to-almost-none. You’ll have updated the affected plugin or theme, so you’re already protected.”
Recognising that technology evolves, relying on the right protection is important. A cybersecurity plugin like Shield Security PRO offers security with vulnerability detection, malware scanning, and bad-bot blocking.
Much like a well-oiled machine, your WordPress requires regular maintenance to ensure peak performance and security. Without it, you can end up with a disorganised and bloated database, which can affect your site’s speed and leave it vulnerable to online threats.
But fear not! The solution lies in a simple yet often overlooked aspect of website management – database cleanup and optimisation.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you how a little housekeeping can not only give your site the speed boost it desperately needs, but also strengthen its security against lurking threats. From manual tweaks to security plugins like Shield Security Pro, you’ll learn how to cleanse your digital space efficiently!
Understanding WordPress database health: Why it matters
Over time, a WordPress database accumulates old and unused data. Think of this as digital clutter – rows upon rows of data that are no longer in use but still take up space. This includes old post revisions, trashed items, spam comments, and data left by uninstalled plugins.
This clutter doesn’t just take up digital space. Every time your website performs a task, your server has to sift through everything. This creates an unnecessary workload that slows down your site, affecting user experience and potentially harming your SEO rankings.
Regular database maintenance ensures seamless website performance and significantly lowers the risk of malware infection. Since malware often hides in the clutter, a clean and optimised database is less vulnerable to attacks.
Here’s what to do to make sure your database is well-maintained:
Regular backups: Before any cleanup, ensure you have a recent backup. It’s your safety net in case something goes wrong.
Routine scanning for malware: Use reliable tools like the Shield Security Pro plugin for regular scans. Catching and removing malware early can prevent more significant issues down the line.
Removing unused themes and plugins: Inactive themes and plugins are not just dead weight; they’re potential security risks. Regularly clean them out.
Spam comment cleanup: Spam comments bloat your database and can harm your site’s credibility. Regularly purging them is crucial.
Optimising database tables
Table optimisation, or defragmentation, is about removing excess data from your site’s data tables. Think of it like organising a messy bookshelf so you can find books faster. It rearranges the data to use space more efficiently, improving performance. This process is important for larger websites, where data operations can become significantly slower over time.
Popular plugins like WP-Optimize, WP-DBManager, and Advanced Database Cleaner offer a user-friendly way to handle database optimisation without needing deep technical expertise. They help automate the cleanup process, ensuring your WordPress site remains speedy and efficient.
Backing up your site before initiating cleanup
Before you dive into the nitty-gritty of database cleanup, you must always back up your site first.
While database cleanup aims to remove only redundant data, the process isn’t infallible. There’s always a risk, however small, that something might go wrong. In such cases, a backup is your quick ticket to recovery, allowing you to restore your site to its pre-cleanup state with minimal fuss.
Here are some scenarios where backups save the day:
User error: Sometimes, the biggest threat to your website can be accidental mishaps, like deleting important files or making erroneous changes.
Platform and plugin updates: Updates are essential for security and performance, but they can occasionally lead to compatibility issues or data loss.
Security breaches: In the unfortunate event of a hack or malware infection, a backup can be vital in restoring your site to a secure state.
The good news is that backing up your WordPress site can be made easy via backup plugins like WP-Staging, UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, and VaultPress (Jetpack Backup). These tools automate the process, ensuring that your site is regularly backed up without requiring manual intervention every time.
How often should you back up?
The frequency of backups should reflect how often your site is updated. For a dynamic site with daily changes, a daily backup is ideal. However, for smaller sites with less frequent updates, weekly or even monthly backups might suffice.
The key is to never skip backups altogether. It’s a small effort that can save a lot of time and stress in the long run.
Manual cleanup vs. plugin-assisted optimisation
When it comes to optimising your WordPress database, you have two primary approaches: manual cleanup or using plugins. While manual cleanup requires more technical know-how, it also gives you more precise control over the optimisation process.
Manual cleanup
Before any changes, ensure you have a recent backup of your WordPress site, including the database. This step is non-negotiable and serves as your safety net.
Log in to your database using phpMyAdmin, which is typically available through your web hosting control panel.
In phpMyAdmin, select your WordPress database from the list on the left.
You’ll see a list of all the tables in your database. Check the tables you want to optimise (or select all).
From the drop-down menu, select Optimize table. This will defragment the selected tables and can improve performance.
Navigate to the SQL tab.
WordPress saves every change you make in the posts as revisions. This can lead to a bloated database. To delete these post revisions, run this command:
DELETEFROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";
Make sure to change the wp_ table prefix to the prefix you or your hosting provider set up during installation.
To delete spam comments, run the following SQL command:
DELETEFROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'spam';
In WordPress, ‘trash’ is a post status used for content that has been moved to the trash but not yet permanently deleted. To empty the trash and permanently delete what’s in it, run this query:
DELETEFROM wp_posts WHERE post_status = 'trash';
Transients are used to speed up WordPress by caching data that is expensive to compute or retrieve. They are typically temporary and can be safely removed:
DELETEFROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE ('%\_transient\_%');
Unused tags can be removed with a query like:
DELETEFROM wp_terms wt INNERJOIN wp_term_taxonomy wtt ON wt.term_id = wtt.term_id WHERE wtt.taxonomy = 'post_tag' AND wtt.count = 0;
This command deletes all tags (from both wp_terms and wp_term_taxonomy tables) that are not assigned to any posts on your WordPress website.
After cleaning up, it’s a good idea to check the database for any errors. Select your database and use the Check table or Repair table options if needed.
You might have tables from old plugins that are no longer used – many will leave tables behind even when the plugin itself have been removed from the site. Review these tables and delete them if they’re not needed. Be very careful with this step, as deleting the wrong table can cause issues with your site. If you’re in doubt, you can always reach out to the plugin developers to ensure you’re deleting the right items.
For plugin-assisted optimisation
For WordPress users who prefer a more straightforward, less technical approach to database optimisation, plugin-assisted methods are a game-changer. These tools offer:
Ease of use: Plugins provide a simple interface for tasks that would otherwise require technical expertise. They’re designed to be intuitive and accessible, even for those with minimal technical background.
Automation: Many WordPress plugins can operate in the background, performing routine cleanups and optimisations without your constant oversight. This automation saves time and ensures regular maintenance is carried out.
Less technical involvement: By automating database optimisation, you free up valuable time and resources to focus on other areas of your business, like content creation, marketing, and customer engagement.
Among the most notable plugins for database optimisation include:
WP-Optimize: This popular plugin cleans your database, compresses images, and caches your site, making it a comprehensive tool for site optimisation.
WP-DBManager: Known for its database backup, repair, and optimisation features, WP-DBManager is a solid choice for those looking to maintain their database’s health.
WP-DBManger download page
Advanced Database Cleaner: If you’re looking for a plugin that goes beyond basic cleanup, this tool helps you get rid of orphaned items and old revisions with ease.
Setting up and using database optimisation plugins
For the sake of this tutorial, we’re going to be using the WP-Optimize plugin:
From your WordPress admin dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin.
Search for the WP-Optimize plugin and click on Install Now, then Active.
A new icon for WP-Optimize will appear in your WordPress left-hand side menu. Click on it and go through the plugin settings to configure the optimisation tasks you want to automate, like spam comment cleanup, post-revision removal, and database table optimisation.
Many plugins offer the option to schedule regular cleanups. Setting this up ensures your database remains optimised without manual intervention.
Choosing the right plugin
When selecting a plugin, especially those designed to modify or remove data, it’s necessary to pick one that is well-reviewed and regularly updated. Check the plugin’s ratings, user reviews, and update history to ensure reliability and compatibility with your version of WordPress.
By choosing the right plugin, you can significantly reduce the effort required in database maintenance, ensuring your WordPress site remains optimised, fast, and secure with minimal hassle.
Using Shield Security Pro for malware removal
When it comes to safeguarding your WordPress site against malware, Shield Security PRO stands out as a robust solution. Its advanced malware scanning and removal tool is specifically designed to protect your website by detecting and eliminating malicious code.
Features of Shield Security PRO’s malware scanner
Comprehensive scanning: The malware scanner in Shield Security PRO thoroughly examines your files, looking for patterns that indicate malware infiltration. This proactive approach ensures that even the most cunningly hidden malware is identified.
Detailed reporting: When it detects malware, the plugin creates a detailed report alerting you to the affected files. This feature allows you to download and inspect these files closely, giving you a clear understanding of the nature and extent of the malware.
Automatic repair option: For those seeking a hands-off approach, Shield Security PRO offers an automatic repair feature. This functionality enables the plugin to edit and remove suspicious code autonomously, saving you the time and effort of manual intervention.
Customisable repair settings: You have the flexibility to set automatic repairs for core files, plugin files, theme files, or all three, depending on your preference and website structure.
While automatic repair is a convenient feature, it’s essential to use it wisely, especially if you regularly modify your WordPress files. In such cases, automatic repairs might unintentionally alter your customisations. Therefore, if you often tweak your WordPress code, manual inspection and repair might be more suitable.
Regardless of whether you choose automatic repairs or prefer to handle file fixes manually, the key advantage of Shield Security PRO’s malware scanning lies in its prompt detection. Fast identification of malicious data is crucial in preventing it from causing significant damage to your site.
Enhance your WordPress site’s performance & security with Shield Security PRO
Regular WordPress database cleanups and optimisations are necessary for maintaining a high-performing, secure website.
While manual database maintenance is certainly an option, it can be time-consuming and requires a certain level of technical expertise. This is where plugins come into play, offering a simpler, more efficient solution. By automating key aspects of the maintenance process, these tools significantly reduce the workload on website owners.
Shield Security PRO is designed to address both the performance and security needs of your WordPress site. It features advanced vulnerability and malware scanning capabilities, which play a vital role in identifying and removing unused data and potentially dangerous elements from your site.
Don’t let the health and security of your WordPress site take a backseat. With Shield Security PRO, you have a powerful tool at your disposal to keep your site running smoothly and securely.
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Cloudflare’s DDoS Threat Report. This edition covers DDoS trends and key findings for the fourth and final quarter of the year 2023, complete with a review of major trends throughout the year.
What are DDoS attacks?
DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, are a type of cyber attack that aims to disrupt websites and online services for users, making them unavailable by overwhelming them with more traffic than they can handle. They are similar to car gridlocks that jam roads, preventing drivers from getting to their destination.
There are three main types of DDoS attacks that we will cover in this report. The first is an HTTP request intensive DDoS attack that aims to overwhelm HTTP servers with more requests than they can handle to cause a denial of service event. The second is an IP packet intensive DDoS attack that aims to overwhelm in-line appliances such as routers, firewalls, and servers with more packets than they can handle. The third is a bit-intensive attack that aims to saturate and clog the Internet link causing that ‘gridlock’ that we discussed. In this report, we will highlight various techniques and insights on all three types of attacks.
Previous editions of the report can be found here, and are also available on our interactive hub, Cloudflare Radar. Cloudflare Radar showcases global Internet traffic, attacks, and technology trends and insights, with drill-down and filtering capabilities for zooming in on insights of specific countries, industries, and service providers. Cloudflare Radar also offers a free API allowing academics, data sleuths, and other web enthusiasts to investigate Internet usage across the globe.
To learn how we prepare this report, refer to our Methodologies.
Key findings
In Q4, we observed a 117% year-over-year increase in network-layer DDoS attacks, and overall increased DDoS activity targeting retail, shipment and public relations websites during and around Black Friday and the holiday season.
In Q4, DDoS attack traffic targeting Taiwan registered a 3,370% growth, compared to the previous year, amidst the upcoming general election and reported tensions with China. The percentage of DDoS attack traffic targeting Israeli websites grew by 27% quarter-over-quarter, and the percentage of DDoS attack traffic targeting Palestinian websites grew by 1,126% quarter-over-quarter — as the military conflict between Israel and Hamas continues.
In Q4, there was a staggering 61,839% surge in DDoS attack traffic targeting Environmental Services websites compared to the previous year, coinciding with the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28).
For an in-depth analysis of these key findings and additional insights that could redefine your understanding of current cybersecurity challenges, read on!
Illustration of a DDoS attack
Hyper-volumetric HTTP DDoS attacks
2023 was the year of uncharted territories. DDoS attacks reached new heights — in size and sophistication. The wider Internet community, including Cloudflare, faced a persistent and deliberately engineered campaign of thousands of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks at never before seen rates.
These attacks were highly complex and exploited an HTTP/2 vulnerability. Cloudflare developed purpose-built technology to mitigate the vulnerability’s effect and worked with others in the industry to responsibly disclose it.
As part of this DDoS campaign, in Q3 our systems mitigated the largest attack we’ve ever seen — 201 million requests per second (rps). That’s almost 8 times larger than our previous 2022 record of 26 million rps.
Largest HTTP DDoS attacks as seen by Cloudflare, by year
Growth in network-layer DDoS attacks
After the hyper-volumetric campaign subsided, we saw an unexpected drop in HTTP DDoS attacks. Overall in 2023, our automated defenses mitigated over 5.2 million HTTP DDoS attacks consisting of over 26 trillion requests. That averages at 594 HTTP DDoS attacks and 3 billion mitigated requests every hour.
Despite these astronomical figures, the amount of HTTP DDoS attack requests actually declined by 20% compared to 2022. This decline was not just annual but was also observed in 2023 Q4 where the number of HTTP DDoS attack requests decreased by 7% YoY and 18% QoQ.
On the network-layer, we saw a completely different trend. Our automated defenses mitigated 8.7 million network-layer DDoS attacks in 2023. This represents an 85% increase compared to 2022.
In 2023 Q4, Cloudflare’s automated defenses mitigated over 80 petabytes of network-layer attacks. On average, our systems auto-mitigated 996 network-layer DDoS attacks and 27 terabytes every hour. The number of network-layer DDoS attacks in 2023 Q4 increased by 175% YoY and 25% QoQ.
HTTP and Network-layer DDoS attacks by quarter
DDoS attacks increase during and around COP 28
In the final quarter of 2023, the landscape of cyber threats witnessed a significant shift. While the Cryptocurrency sector was initially leading in terms of the volume of HTTP DDoS attack requests, a new target emerged as a primary victim. The Environmental Services industry experienced an unprecedented surge in HTTP DDoS attacks, with these attacks constituting half of all its HTTP traffic. This marked a staggering 618-fold increase compared to the previous year, highlighting a disturbing trend in the cyber threat landscape.
This surge in cyber attacks coincided with COP 28, which ran from November 30th to December 12th, 2023. The conference was a pivotal event, signaling what many considered the ‘beginning of the end’ for the fossil fuel era. It was observed that in the period leading up to COP 28, there was a noticeable spike in HTTP attacks targeting Environmental Services websites. This pattern wasn’t isolated to this event alone.
Looking back at historical data, particularly during COP 26 and COP 27, as well as other UN environment-related resolutions or announcements, a similar pattern emerges. Each of these events was accompanied by a corresponding increase in cyber attacks aimed at Environmental Services websites.
In February and March 2023, significant environmental events like the UN’s resolution on climate justice and the launch of United Nations Environment Programme’s Freshwater Challenge potentially heightened the profile of environmental websites, possibly correlating with an increase in attacks on these sites.
This recurring pattern underscores the growing intersection between environmental issues and cyber security, a nexus that is increasingly becoming a focal point for attackers in the digital age.
DDoS attacks and Iron Swords
It’s not just UN resolutions that trigger DDoS attacks. Cyber attacks, and particularly DDoS attacks, have long been a tool of war and disruption. We witnessed an increase in DDoS attack activity in the Ukraine-Russia war, and now we’re also witnessing it in the Israel-Hamas war. We first reported the cyber activity in our report Cyber attacks in the Israel-Hamas war, and we continued to monitor the activity throughout Q4.
DDoS attacks targeting Israeli and Palestinian websites, by industry
Relative to each region’s traffic, the Palestinian territories was the second most attacked region by HTTP DDoS attacks in Q4. Over 10% of all HTTP requests towards Palestinian websites were DDoS attacks, a total of 1.3 billion DDoS requests — representing a 1,126% increase in QoQ. 90% of these DDoS attacks targeted Palestinian Banking websites. Another 8% targeted Information Technology and Internet platforms.
Top attacked Palestinian industries
Similarly, our systems automatically mitigated over 2.2 billion HTTP DDoS requests targeting Israeli websites. While 2.2 billion represents a decrease compared to the previous quarter and year, it did amount to a larger percentage out of the total Israel-bound traffic. This normalized figure represents a 27% increase QoQ but a 92% decrease YoY. Notwithstanding the larger amount of attack traffic, Israel was the 77th most attacked region relative to its own traffic. It was also the 33rd most attacked by total volume of attacks, whereas the Palestinian territories was 42nd.
Of those Israeli websites attacked, Newspaper & Media were the main target — receiving almost 40% of all Israel-bound HTTP DDoS attacks. The second most attacked industry was the Computer Software industry. The Banking, Financial Institutions, and Insurance (BFSI) industry came in third.
Top attacked Israeli industries
On the network layer, we see the same trend. Palestinian networks were targeted by 470 terabytes of attack traffic — accounting for over 68% of all traffic towards Palestinian networks. Surpassed only by China, this figure placed the Palestinian territories as the second most attacked region in the world, by network-layer DDoS attack, relative to all Palestinian territories-bound traffic. By absolute volume of traffic, it came in third. Those 470 terabytes accounted for approximately 1% of all DDoS traffic that Cloudflare mitigated.
Israeli networks, though, were targeted by only 2.4 terabytes of attack traffic, placing it as the 8th most attacked country by network-layer DDoS attacks (normalized). Those 2.4 terabytes accounted for almost 10% of all traffic towards Israeli networks.
Top attacked countries
When we turned the picture around, we saw that 3% of all bytes that were ingested in our Israeli-based data centers were network-layer DDoS attacks. In our Palestinian-based data centers, that figure was significantly higher — approximately 17% of all bytes.
On the application layer, we saw that 4% of HTTP requests originating from Palestinian IP addresses were DDoS attacks, and almost 2% of HTTP requests originating from Israeli IP addresses were DDoS attacks as well.
Main sources of DDoS attacks
In the third quarter of 2022, China was the largest source of HTTP DDoS attack traffic. However, since the fourth quarter of 2022, the US took the first place as the largest source of HTTP DDoS attacks and has maintained that undesirable position for five consecutive quarters. Similarly, our data centers in the US are the ones ingesting the most network-layer DDoS attack traffic — over 38% of all attack bytes.
HTTP DDoS attacks originating from China and the US by quarter
Together, China and the US account for a little over a quarter of all HTTP DDoS attack traffic in the world. Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and Argentina account for the next twenty-five percent.
Top source of HTTP DDoS attacks
These large figures usually correspond to large markets. For this reason, we also normalize the attack traffic originating from each country by comparing their outbound traffic. When we do this, we often get small island nations or smaller market countries that a disproportionate amount of attack traffic originates from. In Q4, 40% of Saint Helena’s outbound traffic were HTTP DDoS attacks — placing it at the top. Following the ‘remote volcanic tropical island’, Libya came in second, Swaziland (also known as Eswatini) in third. Argentina and Egypt follow in fourth and fifth place.
Top source of HTTP DDoS attacks with respect to each country’s traffic
On the network layer, Zimbabwe came in first place. Almost 80% of all traffic we ingested in our Zimbabwe-based data center was malicious. In second place, Paraguay, and Madagascar in third.
Top source of Network-layer DDoS attacks with respect to each country’s traffic
Most attacked industries
By volume of attack traffic, Cryptocurrency was the most attacked industry in Q4. Over 330 billion HTTP requests targeted it. This figure accounts for over 4% of all HTTP DDoS traffic for the quarter. The second most attacked industry was Gaming & Gambling. These industries are known for being coveted targets and attract a lot of traffic and attacks.
Top industries targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks
On the network layer, the Information Technology and Internet industry was the most attacked — over 45% of all network-layer DDoS attack traffic was aimed at it. Following far behind were the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Gaming & Gambling, and Telecommunications industries.
Top industries targeted by Network-layer DDoS attacks
To change perspectives, here too, we normalized the attack traffic by the total traffic for a specific industry. When we do that, we get a different picture.
Top attacked industries by HTTP DDoS attacks, by region
We already mentioned in the beginning of this report that the Environmental Services industry was the most attacked relative to its own traffic. In second place was the Packaging and Freight Delivery industry, which is interesting because of its timely correlation with online shopping during Black Friday and the winter holiday season. Purchased gifts and goods need to get to their destination somehow, and it seems as though attackers tried to interfere with that. On a similar note, DDoS attacks on retail companies increased by 16% compared to the previous year.
Top industries targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks with respect to each industry’s traffic
On the network layer, Public Relations and Communications was the most targeted industry — 36% of its traffic was malicious. This too is very interesting given its timing. Public Relations and Communications companies are usually linked to managing public perception and communication. Disrupting their operations can have immediate and widespread reputational impacts which becomes even more critical during the Q4 holiday season. This quarter often sees increased PR and communication activities due to holidays, end-of-year summaries, and preparation for the new year, making it a critical operational period — one that some may want to disrupt.
Top industries targeted by Network-layer DDoS attacks with respect to each industry’s traffic
Most attacked countries and regions
Singapore was the main target of HTTP DDoS attacks in Q4. Over 317 billion HTTP requests, 4% of all global DDoS traffic, were aimed at Singaporean websites. The US followed closely in second and Canada in third. Taiwan came in as the fourth most attacked region — amidst the upcoming general elections and the tensions with China. Taiwan-bound attacks in Q4 traffic increased by 847% compared to the previous year, and 2,858% compared to the previous quarter. This increase is not limited to the absolute values. When normalized, the percentage of HTTP DDoS attack traffic targeting Taiwan relative to all Taiwan-bound traffic also significantly increased. It increased by 624% quarter-over-quarter and 3,370% year-over-year.
Top targeted countries by HTTP DDoS attacks
While China came in as the ninth most attacked country by HTTP DDoS attacks, it’s the number one most attacked country by network-layer attacks. 45% of all network-layer DDoS traffic that Cloudflare mitigated globally was China-bound. The rest of the countries were so far behind that it is almost negligible.
Top targeted countries by Network-layer DDoS attacks
When normalizing the data, Iraq, Palestinian territories, and Morocco take the lead as the most attacked regions with respect to their total inbound traffic. What’s interesting is that Singapore comes up as fourth. So not only did Singapore face the largest amount of HTTP DDoS attack traffic, but that traffic also made up a significant amount of the total Singapore-bound traffic. By contrast, the US was second most attacked by volume (per the application-layer graph above), but came in the fiftieth place with respect to the total US-bound traffic.
Top targeted countries by HTTP DDoS attacks with respect to each country’s traffic
Similar to Singapore, but arguably more dramatic, China is both the number one most attacked country by network-layer DDoS attack traffic, and also with respect to all China-bound traffic. Almost 86% of all China-bound traffic was mitigated by Cloudflare as network-layer DDoS attacks. The Palestinian territories, Brazil, Norway, and again Singapore followed with large percentages of attack traffic.
Top targeted countries by Network-layer DDoS attacks with respect to each country’s traffic
Attack vectors and attributes
The majority of DDoS attacks are short and small relative to Cloudflare’s scale. However, unprotected websites and networks can still suffer disruption from short and small attacks without proper inline automated protection — underscoring the need for organizations to be proactive in adopting a robust security posture.
In 2023 Q4, 91% of attacks ended within 10 minutes, 97% peaked below 500 megabits per second (mbps), and 88% never exceeded 50 thousand packets per second (pps).
Two out of every 100 network-layer DDoS attacks lasted more than an hour, and exceeded 1 gigabit per second (gbps). One out of every 100 attacks exceeded 1 million packets per second. Furthermore, the amount of network-layer DDoS attacks exceeding 100 million packets per second increased by 15% quarter-over-quarter.
DDoS attack stats you should know
One of those large attacks was a Mirai-botnet attack that peaked at 160 million packets per second. The packet per second rate was not the largest we’ve ever seen. The largest we’ve ever seen was 754 million packets per second. That attack occurred in 2020, and we have yet to see anything larger.
This more recent attack, though, was unique in its bits per second rate. This was the largest network-layer DDoS attack we’ve seen in Q4. It peaked at 1.9 terabits per second and originated from a Mirai botnet. It was a multi-vector attack, meaning it combined multiple attack methods. Some of those methods included UDP fragments flood, UDP/Echo flood, SYN Flood, ACK Flood, and TCP malformed flags.
This attack targeted a known European Cloud Provider and originated from over 18 thousand unique IP addresses that are assumed to be spoofed. It was automatically detected and mitigated by Cloudflare’s defenses.
This goes to show that even the largest attacks end very quickly. Previous large attacks we’ve seen ended within seconds — underlining the need for an in-line automated defense system. Though still rare, attacks in the terabit range are becoming more and more prominent.
1.9 Terabit per second Mirai DDoS attacks
The use of Mirai-variant botnets is still very common. In Q4, almost 3% of all attacks originate from Mirai. Though, of all attack methods, DNS-based attacks remain the attackers’ favorite. Together, DNS Floods and DNS Amplification attacks account for almost 53% of all attacks in Q4. SYN Flood follows in second and UDP floods in third. We’ll cover the two DNS attack types here, and you can visit the hyperlinks to learn more about UDP and SYN floods in our Learning Center.
DNS floods and amplification attacks
DNS floods and DNS amplification attacks both exploit the Domain Name System (DNS), but they operate differently. DNS is like a phone book for the Internet, translating human-friendly domain names like “www.cloudfare.com” into numerical IP addresses that computers use to identify each other on the network.
Simply put, DNS-based DDoS attacks comprise the method computers and servers used to identify one another to cause an outage or disruption, without actually ‘taking down’ a server. For example, a server may be up and running, but the DNS server is down. So clients won’t be able to connect to it and will experience it as an outage.
A DNS flood attack bombards a DNS server with an overwhelming number of DNS queries. This is usually done using a DDoS botnet. The sheer volume of queries can overwhelm the DNS server, making it difficult or impossible for it to respond to legitimate queries. This can result in the aforementioned service disruptions, delays or even an outage for those trying to access the websites or services that rely on the targeted DNS server.
On the other hand, a DNS amplification attack involves sending a small query with a spoofed IP address (the address of the victim) to a DNS server. The trick here is that the DNS response is significantly larger than the request. The server then sends this large response to the victim’s IP address. By exploiting open DNS resolvers, the attacker can amplify the volume of traffic sent to the victim, leading to a much more significant impact. This type of attack not only disrupts the victim but also can congest entire networks.
In both cases, the attacks exploit the critical role of DNS in network operations. Mitigation strategies typically include securing DNS servers against misuse, implementing rate limiting to manage traffic, and filtering DNS traffic to identify and block malicious requests.
Top attack vectors
Amongst the emerging threats we track, we recorded a 1,161% increase in ACK-RST Floods as well as a 515% increase in CLDAP floods, and a 243% increase in SPSS floods, in each case as compared to last quarter. Let’s walk through some of these attacks and how they’re meant to cause disruption.
Top emerging attack vectors
ACK-RST floods
An ACK-RST Flood exploits the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) by sending numerous ACK and RST packets to the victim. This overwhelms the victim’s ability to process and respond to these packets, leading to service disruption. The attack is effective because each ACK or RST packet prompts a response from the victim’s system, consuming its resources. ACK-RST Floods are often difficult to filter since they mimic legitimate traffic, making detection and mitigation challenging.
CLDAP floods
CLDAP (Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a variant of LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). It’s used for querying and modifying directory services running over IP networks. CLDAP is connectionless, using UDP instead of TCP, making it faster but less reliable. Because it uses UDP, there’s no handshake requirement which allows attackers to spoof the IP address thus allowing attackers to exploit it as a reflection vector. In these attacks, small queries are sent with a spoofed source IP address (the victim’s IP), causing servers to send large responses to the victim, overwhelming it. Mitigation involves filtering and monitoring unusual CLDAP traffic.
SPSS floods
Floods abusing the SPSS (Source Port Service Sweep) protocol is a network attack method that involves sending packets from numerous random or spoofed source ports to various destination ports on a targeted system or network. The aim of this attack is two-fold: first, to overwhelm the victim’s processing capabilities, causing service disruptions or network outages, and second, it can be used to scan for open ports and identify vulnerable services. The flood is achieved by sending a large volume of packets, which can saturate the victim’s network resources and exhaust the capacities of its firewalls and intrusion detection systems. To mitigate such attacks, it’s essential to leverage in-line automated detection capabilities.
Cloudflare is here to help – no matter the attack type, size, or duration
Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet, and we believe that a better Internet is one that is secure, performant, and available to all. No matter the attack type, the attack size, the attack duration or the motivation behind the attack, Cloudflare’s defenses stand strong. Since we pioneered unmetered DDoS Protection in 2017, we’ve made and kept our commitment to make enterprise-grade DDoS protection free for all organizations alike — and of course, without compromising performance. This is made possible by our unique technology and robust network architecture.
It’s important to remember that security is a process, not a single product or flip of a switch. Atop of our automated DDoS protection systems, we offer comprehensive bundled features such as firewall, bot detection, API protection, and caching to bolster your defenses. Our multi-layered approach optimizes your security posture and minimizes potential impact. We’ve also put together a list of recommendations to help you optimize your defenses against DDoS attacks, and you can follow our step-by-step wizards to secure your applications and prevent DDoS attacks. And, if you’d like to benefit from our easy to use, best-in-class protection against DDoS and other attacks on the Internet, you can sign up — for free! — at cloudflare.com. If you’re under attack, register or call the cyber emergency hotline number shown here for a rapid response.
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