A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a malicious attempt to affect the availability of a targeted system, such as a website or application, to legitimate end users. Typically, attackers generate large volumes of packets or requests ultimately overwhelming the target system. In case of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, and the attacker uses multiple compromised or controlled sources to generate the attack.
In general, DDoS attacks can be segregated by which layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model they attack. They are most common at the Network (layer 3), Transport (Layer 4), Presentation (Layer 6) and Application (Layer 7) Layers.
Benefits of AWS Shield
Get automatic DDoS protection
Automatically detect and mitigate sophisticated network and application layer Distributed denial of service (DDoS) events.
Customize application protection
Customize application protection against DDoS risks through integrations with Shield Response Team (SRT) protocol or AWS WAF.
Gain insights and cost protections
Gain visibility, insights, and cost savings for DDoS events that impact your AWS resources.
Use cases
Automatically scrub bad traffic at specific layers
Protect applications and APIs from SYN floods, UDP floods, or other reflection attacks.