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Common DDoS Attack Vectors

Discover common cyber attack vectors that we can test against your environment

Written by I. Solomon

Updated at February 19th, 2025

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DDoS attack vectors are the methods used by attackers to overwhelm a target system, network, or service with excessive traffic, causing disruption or denial of access to legitimate users, and the list below highlights some of the more common available attack vectors.

Layer Type AV Description
Network
TCP
SYN flood
TCP-based flood attack, abusing the 3-way handshake. Sending multiple TCP packets with respective TCP flags.
Tsunamy SYN flood
SYN-ACK flood
ACK flood
RST flood
PSH flood
FIN flood
URG flood
ACK/FIN flood
PUSH/ACK flood
ACK/RST flood
URG/RST flood
URG/SYN flood
URG/RST/SYN/FIN flood
ACK/PUSH/RST/SYN/FIN flood
URG/ACK/PUSH/RST/FIN flood
URG/ACK/PUSH/RST/SYN Flood
URG/ACK/PUSH/SYN/FIN Flood
URG/ACK/RST/SYN/FIN Flood
URG/PUSH/RST/SYN/FIN Flood
URG/FIN flood
URG/PUSHf flood
ACK/PUSH/FIN flood
ACK/PUSH/RST flood
ACK/PUSH/SYN flood
ACK/RST/FIN flood
ACK/RST/SYN flood
ACK/SYN/FIN flood
PUSH/RST/FIN flood
PUSH/RST/SYN flood
PUSH/SYN/FIN flood
RST/SYN/FIN flood
URG/ACK/FIN flood
URG/ACK/PUSH flood
URG/ACK/RST flood
URG/ACK/SYN flood
URG/PUSH/FIN flood
URG/PUSH/RST flood
XMAS flood
TCP Middlebox Reflection flood TCP-based flood that abuses security flaws in network middleboxes
Fragmented ACK flood ACK flood while the IP packets are fragmented so the PPS rate is higher than in a regular attack
UDP
DNS Garbage flood UDP flood with malmformed data targeting port 53
NTP flood UDP flood with malmformed data targeting port 123
Fragmented UDP flood UDP flood while the IP packets are fragmented so the PPS rate is higher than in a regular attack
Reflective DNS flood
UDP-based attacks that abuse network components with security flaws, which makes them sending amplified attacks to a victim target
Reflective CHARGEN flood
Reflective Memcache flood
Reflective SIP flood
Reflective SSDP flood
Reflective DHCPDiscover flood
Reflective SADP flood
SNMP Reflection flood
CoAP Reflection flood
STUN Reflection flood
IP
ICMP flood
Bandwidth floods that abuse different IP protocols
Ping of Death
IGMP flood
ESP flood
AH flood
GRE flood
IPv4-in-IPv4 flood
IPv6-in-IPv4 flood
Special techniques
Carpet Bombing Network flood against an entire subnet. For example, against /24 subnet
Hit and Run Network attack that is performed by short bursts that repetitively inflict the target. This technique aims to avoid detection by the risk mitigation
 
Web
HTTP GET flood
HTTP requests flood, by using one of the HTTP methods
  HTTP POST flood
  HTTP HEAD flood
  HTTP OPTIONS flood
  HTTP PUT flood
  HTTP DELETE flood
Application
HTTPS GET flood
HTTPS requests flood, by using one of the HTTP methods
HTTPS POST flood
HTTPS HEAD flood
HTTPS OPTIONS flood
HTTPS PUT flood
HTTPS DELETE flood
HTTPS Login flood HTTPS flood against a login endpoint, by using multiple credentials, saturating the DB's resources
HTTPS Search flood HTTPS flood against a search endpoint, by using multiple credentials, saturating the DB's resources
HTTPS Randomized path flood HTTPS flood against a hostname, while putting malmformed, randomly generated path in every request
HTTPS Randomized parameters flood HTTPS flood against an endpoint with an existing parameter. The attack includes puting a random value in every request. That's a cache busting attack vector
HTTPS Randomized HTTP headers flood HTTPS flood with random number and values of HTTP headers. Its objective is to bypass signature-based risk mitigations
HTTPS Randomized Cipher-Suites HTTPS flood with different client TLS fingerprints. It randomizes the JA3 and JA4 signatures of the requests
HTTP/2 Rapid Reset HTTP/2 protocol abuse by sending requests and shuttnig them off before their completion. It allows an attacker to amplify their HTTPS request volume
HTTP flood Direct-to-Origin HTTP against the origin IP, bypassing the proxy service
HTTPS flood Direct-to-Origin HTTPS against the origin IP, bypassing the proxy service
HTTPS multiple URI flood HTTPS flood that targets multiple, existing paths
Browser engine support
HTTP flood with JS support HTTP flood with a tool that supports Javascript
HTTS flood with Cookie support HTTP flood with a tool that can recieve and send cookies
HTTPS flood with JS support HTTPS flood with a tool that supports Javascript
HTTPS flood with Cookie support HTTPS flood with a tool that can recieve and send cookies
Low and Slow
Slow Read Low & slow attack that fetches specfic content very slowly from the server. It keeps hte connection between the client and server open for a long time, saturating the server's resources, which requires it to hold multiple connections at the same time
Slow POST Low & slow attack that uploads content very slowly to the server. It keeps hte connection between the client and server open for a long time, saturating the server's resources, which requires it to hold multiple connections at the same time
TLS renegotiation  Low & slow attack where the client opens TLS sessions and constantly requests to renegotiate the encryption keys with the server. It saturates the server's resources
HTTP/2 continuation flood Low & slow attack where the attacker abuses the HTTP/2 framing syntax, making lots of never-ending requests streams, thus keeping the connection between the client and server open, causnig resources saturation to the server
Volumetric-applicative
Large File Download Low-request-rate application attack, where an attacker pulls a large file from the victim server, causing uplink pipe saturation. This AV is useful for avoiding rate limit detection
Large File Download with randomized parameters Large File Download with a randomized parameter attack that's meant to bust the caching mechanism provided by a CDN
Large File Upload Low-request-rate application attack, where an attacker sends requests with large body size to the victim server, causing downlink pipe saturation. This AV is useful for avoiding rate limit detection
DNS
DNS Query flood An attacker sends the same DNS query multiple times against the DNS server, causing resource saturation
DNS Dictionary flood An attacker sends lots of different DNS queries to the victim DNS server, causing resource saturation
TLS TLS flood An attacker performs multiple TLS client hello requests against the victim server. Since the server will respond with server-hello and begin the encryption sequence, it may reach resource saturation
     
     
     

 

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  • Understanding DDoS Attack Vectors
  • Basic Rate Limit Configuration for DDoS Protection
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