Protecting Your Game Server from DDoS Attacks

Gaming has become very popular in recent years, with increasingly more people sitting down for an hour or two of gaming after work or on the weekends. It has also changed significantly, with a significant portion of gaming now done on dedicated servers. Game admins, companies, and even players can rent or build a gaming server and install whatever games they want.

The main problem is that gaming servers have become a popular target for DDoS attacks in the past few years. In this article, we explain why this happens and what you can do to protect your server and gaming sessions from DDoS attacks.

Why Gaming Servers are a Prime DDoS Target

These types of servers are a target for malicious actors for one main reason: their performance. Modern games are very demanding and require high-end hardware to run. The hardware requirements increase when you have multiple, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people playing on the same server.

This performance makes them a prime target for viruses that can leverage their performance to propagate through a network very quickly. Because these servers also connect to other servers and users’ computers, there is a possibility that these viruses will reach these additional devices.

Malicious actors also target gaming servers to install cryptocurrency mining trojans and malware. This malware can be installed on the server or any computer that connects to it. One DDoS attack can, therefore, lead to the infection of hundreds or thousands of devices.

Lastly, there is competition in the industry. Competitive online gaming is a billion-pound business now, and numerous businesses want more players on their servers. They know that they can organise tournaments or other events with enough players, so they stop other servers from having them using a DDoS attack.

Set Yourself Up for Success

It is perfectly fine for a gamer with enough knowledge to set up a gaming server with enough protection against DDoS attacks. However, it can be challenging for someone without this knowledge and experience to do the same.

Instead of dealing with everything setting up the DDoS protection correctly entails, you can work with companies that will provide the protection you need. These companies add game DDoS mitigation and protection to gaming servers to protect them from these attacks.

They also provide a robust control panel so you know what is happening on your server at any time, and 24/7 access to knowledgeable customer support agencies who can help with any issues.

Protecting Your Server Using a Firewall

If you decide to set everything up yourself, the first thing you should do is set up a firewall. It should block all incoming traffic by default because DDoS attacks work by sending you a lot of data and traffic that brings your website to a crawl.

When setting it up, it is crucial to set exceptions that allow access to ports and protocols required for logging into the server, SSH, and connecting to the game, TCP/UDP. You can strengthen these rules further by ensuring only specific IP addresses can access the login protocols and ports. If you do this, ensure you have a static IP address and not a dynamic one.

Dynamic ID addresses change, so you will be left without access to your account or server if yours changes when you set these rules.

Use Rate Limiting to Protect Your Server

The best thing you should do is protect your server using rate-limiting strategies. While a firewall will protect your server from incoming requests, it still leaves an attack surface that malicious actors can target. Rate limiting helps deal with this.

As its name suggests, rate limiting limits the number of requests the server can process in a given time.  Because of this, it can be an excellent tool against DDoS attacks. In addition to limiting the number of requests, it can also limit the time window.

The time window is the time over which a request is applied. It can range from one second to over a day. When you are under a DDoS attack, requests can come every few milliseconds, overwhelming your server. Limiting the time window ensures some of these requests cannot come through, in turn limiting their effect on your server.

Applying Rate Limiting on Different Levels

Rate limiting is also powerful because you can apply it on different levels. The application’s code can have an inbuilt rate limiting that tracks the number of incoming requests and enforces rate limits based on the defined rules.

You can also implement it at the server level. Server software like Apache and Nginx can apply rate-limiting tools depending on specific criteria. Typical cases include headers, URLs, and IP addresses. With these rules, you can also ban IP addresses that make too many requests, leading to them seeing a 403 (forbidden) or other error.

If your game server uses APIs for any functionality, you can also set rate limits on your API. Lastly, you can apply rate limiting at the reverse proxy level. It is common for game servers to use a reverse proxy that sits in front of the application server and acts as a gatekeeper, filtering and controlling incoming traffic.

Harden Your Server Configuration

Your firewall and rate-limiting set-up will harden your server enough for minor attacks. However, you need additional hardening implementations for more serious attacks. You can do this by closing unused ports, disabling all unnecessary services, and enabling secure connections and communications.

You should also set up automatic server updates even with all these security protocols. These will keep the operating system and server software up to date with the latest security patches. 

Remember, malicious actors are always looking at changelogs to see what patches a developer has applied to know the vulnerabilities found in older software and operating system versions.

The measures discussed above should help you significantly reduce the impact of DDoS attacks. However, you should remain vigilant to catch any issues because it is challenging to eliminate the risk due to the ever-evolving nature of cyber threats. It is a good idea to work with cybersecurity experts to learn additional ways to keep your gaming server and anyone who connects to it safely.