Prolexic Mitigates DDoS Denial Of Service Attacks Against Auction Site

BidCactus.com is a popular online site where savvy bidders can walk away with brand new merchandise such as electronics, fashions, gift cards, and more for up to 90 percent off retail price. Unfortunately, the site became a target for DDoS denial of service attackers. Earlier this year, a denial of service DDoS attack overwhelmed the sites firewall capabilities and requests were no longer being delivered to the load balancer.

The DDoS attackers sent a ransom demand for several thousand Euros in exchange for stopping the denial of service attack. Management at BidCactus refused to pay. While BidCactus.com had DDoS mitigation services from its hosting provider, a second attack overwhelmed its resources. The hosting provider nullrouted or “black holed” BidCactus.com in order to avoid collateral damage to its other hosted ites.

“Our site went completely dark,” says Jeffrey Dvornek, director of technology at BidCactus.com. “We had been attacked sporadically before, but those were general smaller DDoS attacks that we could fight off with firewall rules. This time we were down for a total of six hours and we completely lost the opportunity to do business during the attack.

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