Multi-Layer DDoS Protection Setup for Your Website

A DDoS attack can take your site down in seconds if you're not protected. A network flood at L3/L4 or a clever HTTP flood at L7 can overwhelm even a powerful server. We help set up comprehensive protection against all attack types. With over 10 years in production (Bitrix, 1C, web development) and 40+ projects, we know the drill. Contact us for an audit of your infrastructure.

One client — a WooCommerce online store — was losing up to 30% of revenue due to periodic DDoS attacks. After our configuration, the site survived a 1000 RPS attack with response time under 200 ms. Contact us for a free audit.

Why Standard Protection Isn't Enough?

Often developers rely on a single layer: throw in Cloudflare or enable rate limiting. That's not enough. Attackers adapt: bypass simple limits, mimic legitimate traffic. OWASP recommends multi-layer protection — only by combining CDN, rate limiting, behavioral analysis, and monitoring can you guarantee stability.

How We Set Up Protection Turnkey

We use proven tools and configure each layer individually. Cloudflare Free/Pro automatically covers L3/L4 attacks. For L7, we additionally configure rate limiting and behavioral filters. Result: your site withstands attacks of 500+ RPS without performance loss.

Example Cloudflare Configuration

• Security > DDoS > HTTP DDoS attack protection — Sensitivity High, Action Block (start with Log)
• Security > Settings — Security Level Medium/High, Bot Fight Mode ON, Browser Integrity Check ON
• During active attack, enable Under Attack Mode — all visitors go through a JS challenge

Rate Limiting in Nginx

# Limit zones — inside http block
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=api:10m rate=30r/m;
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=login:10m rate=5r/m;
limit_conn_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=perip:10m;

server {
    # API — 30 requests per minute
    location /api/ {
        limit_req zone=api burst=10 nodelay;
        limit_req_status 429;
    }

    # Login form — 5 attempts per minute
    location /login {
        limit_req zone=login burst=3 nodelay;
        limit_req_status 429;
    }

    # Max 20 concurrent connections per IP
    limit_conn perip 20;
}

Rate Limiting in Application (Laravel)

// routes/api.php
Route::middleware('throttle:60,1')->group(function () {
    Route::get('/data', [DataController::class, 'index']);
});

// Custom limits with different rules for authenticated users
Route::middleware('throttle:api')->group(function () { ... });

// config/app.php or RouteServiceProvider
RateLimiter::for('api', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user()
        ? Limit::perMinute(120)->by($request->user()->id)
        : Limit::perMinute(30)->by($request->ip());
});

SYN Flood at Linux Kernel Level

# /etc/sysctl.conf
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 2048
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2
net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries = 3

# Apply
sysctl -p

Fail2ban for HTTP Flood

# /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/nginx-req-limit.conf
[Definition]
failregex = limiting requests, excess:.* by zone.*client: <HOST>

# /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/nginx.conf
[nginx-req-limit]
enabled = true
filter = nginx-req-limit
logpath = /var/log/nginx/error.log
maxretry = 10
findtime = 60
bantime = 600

Geo-blocking

During an attack from specific regions — temporary block via Cloudflare or GeoIP in Nginx:

# MaxMind GeoIP2
geoip2 /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb {
    $geoip2_country_code country iso_code;
}

map $geoip2_country_code $blocked_country {
    default 0;
    CN 1;
    RU 0; # Don't block your own audience
}

if ($blocked_country = 1) { return 403; }

Protection Level Comparison

DDoS Protection Solution Comparison

Cloudflare is better suited for small and medium businesses: it's 2-3 times cheaper than alternatives with comparable L7 protection. Order a protection setup and get a stability guarantee.

How to Choose the Protection Level?

Determine which attacks are most likely for your project. If it's a low-traffic informational portal, Cloudflare Free and basic rate limiting are enough. For an online store or high-traffic API, you need the full stack: CDN, WAF, behavioral analysis, and monitoring. We'll help select a configuration for your budget and load. Contact us for a free audit.

How to React Quickly to a DDoS Attack?

At the first signs of an attack (increase in 5xx, drop in LCP), immediately enable Under Attack Mode in Cloudflare. Then check Nginx logs for anomalous IPs and custom URIs. If the attack continues, activate Fail2ban with the nginx-req-limit filter. As a last resort, temporarily block the source country via GeoIP. We stand by 24/7 and can deploy protection within 30 minutes.

What's Included in the Work?

• Audit of current protection and vulnerability identification
• CDN integration with DDoS protection (Cloudflare)
• Rate limiting configuration on Nginx and application level
• Fail2ban installation with custom filters
• Monitoring setup (Grafana + Prometheus, alerts)
• Documentation and training for your team
• 30-day configuration guarantee

Setup Process

1. Audit — analyze current infrastructure, logs, load
2. Design — select optimal stack and rules
3. Implementation — configure all protection layers
4. Testing — simulate attacks, verify correctness
5. Deploy — move to production with monitoring

Timelines

• Cloudflare integration + basic rules: 1 day
• Rate limiting + Fail2ban: 1-2 days
• Monitoring and alerts: 1 day
• Full turnkey package: up to 5 days

Pricing is calculated individually — contact us for an estimate.

Want to protect your site? We'll assess your infrastructure for free. Contact us.

Web Application Security: HTTPS, CSP, XSS, CSRF, WAF, DDoS Protection

A website breach rarely looks like in movies. More often it's: a bot finds an unprotected /admin/export endpoint, downloads the customer database, and closes the connection. Or: through an outdated WordPress plugin, a web shell is uploaded, and the server starts sending spam. Or quieter: an XSS in a comment field allows stealing admin session cookies, unnoticed for months. We have analyzed dozens of such cases — each vulnerability could have been fixed at the development or audit stage.

Web application security is not a single setting. It's layers of protection, each closing a separate class of attacks. Order an audit — we'll assess the project and deliver a turnkey plan within 2–4 weeks.

How do we ensure comprehensive web application security?

HTTPS and Proper TLS Configuration

HTTPS is the minimum mandatory level. But having an SSL certificate and having a properly configured TLS are different things.

In Nginx/Apache configuration we check:

• Protocols: only TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, SSLv3 and TLS 1.0/1.1 are disabled
• Cipher suites: prefer ECDHE (Forward Secrecy), remove NULL, RC4, DES, 3DES
• HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload) — browser will never make insecure requests
• OCSP Stapling — speeds up certificate revocation check
• Redirect 301 from HTTP to HTTPS — both in server config and code (double redirect causes SEO weight loss)

Check: SSL Labs (ssllabs.com/ssltest) should show A or A+. If B, the configuration is weak.

Let's Encrypt + Certbot for production is standard. Automatic renewal via certbot renew in cron. Wildcard certificates for subdomains via DNS-01 challenge.

Content Security Policy: The Most Powerful and Complex Protection

CSP is an HTTP header that tells the browser which sources are allowed to load resources. A properly configured CSP completely blocks most XSS attacks, even if the vulnerability exists in the code.

The problem: breaking the site with an incorrect CSP is easy. default-src 'none' — and fonts, images, JS stop working. So we start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only — CSP logs violations but does not block anything. We monitor reports for 2–4 weeks, refine the policy, then switch to enforcement mode.

Example of a real policy for a site with Google Analytics, Google Fonts, and Stripe:

Content-Security-Policy:
  default-src 'self';
  script-src 'self' https://www.googletagmanager.com https://js.stripe.com 'nonce-{random}';
  style-src 'self' https://fonts.googleapis.com 'unsafe-inline';
  font-src 'self' https://fonts.gstatic.com;
  frame-src https://js.stripe.com;
  img-src 'self' data: https://www.google-analytics.com;
  connect-src 'self' https://api.stripe.com https://www.google-analytics.com;
  report-uri /csp-report;

nonce — a random string generated server-side per request. Inline scripts with the correct nonce are allowed; without nonce, they are blocked. This completely breaks XSS via <script>alert(1)</script>.

'unsafe-inline' in style-src is a compromise for inline styles. It's better to remove it by moving all styles to CSS files, but that requires refactoring.

Why XSS Remains the Most Common Vulnerability?

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) — injection of JS code through user input. According to OWASP, XSS is in the top 3 web application vulnerabilities. Three types:

Protection: never insert user input into HTML without escaping. In PHP — htmlspecialchars() with ENT_QUOTES. In Laravel Blade templates — {{ $var }} is safe, {!! $var !!} is dangerous. In React — {variable} is safe, dangerouslySetInnerHTML is dangerous. For Rich Text — use htmlpurifier on PHP or DOMPurify in the browser.

CSRF: Protecting Forms and APIs

CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) — an attacker forces the victim's browser to send a request on their behalf. Example: a user is logged into a bank, opens a malicious page, which makes fetch('https://bank.ru/transfer?to=evil&amount=50000') — if the bank is unprotected, money is transferred.

CSRF tokens — standard protection for forms: the server generates a random token, stores it in the session, and inserts it as a hidden field in the form. On POST request, the token is verified. The attacker does not know the token. Laravel does this automatically with @csrf.

SameSite cookies — modern protection: SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax prevents the browser from sending cookies in cross-site requests. Works in all modern browsers.

API without sessions (JWT, Bearer tokens) — CSRF is irrelevant if the token is not stored in a cookie (but in the Authorization header or localStorage). However, localStorage is vulnerable to XSS — so for sensitive data, HttpOnly cookies with SameSite are preferable.

WAF and DDoS Protection

WAF (Web Application Firewall) filters HTTP traffic for attacks: SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, known exploit patterns. Options:

• Cloudflare WAF — cloud-based, OWASP Top 10 rules out of the box, custom rules via expressions. Managed Rules automatically block new threats.
• ModSecurity (Nginx/Apache) — self-hosted, OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS). Flexible but requires tuning and monitoring of false positives.
• AWS WAF — for infrastructure on AWS, integrates with CloudFront and ALB.

DDoS protection. Cloudflare at L3/L4/L7 is the de facto standard for most sites. Automatic mitigation of volumetric attacks, Under Attack Mode during active attacks. For critical infrastructure — Cloudflare Magic Transit or specialized solutions (Qrator, StormWall for the Russian market).

Rate Limiting at the application level — an additional layer. Laravel ThrottleRequests middleware: 60 requests per minute per IP for general endpoints, 5 for /login and /password/reset. Redis as a counter store — mandatory for horizontally scalable systems (otherwise limits are not synchronized between servers).

Other Mandatory Measures

Security headers. Besides CSP: X-Frame-Options: DENY (clickjacking protection), X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff (MIME sniffing), Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin, Permissions-Policy (restrict browser API access: camera, microphone, geolocation).

SQL injection. Prepared statements everywhere. No concatenation of user input into SQL strings. ORM (Eloquent, Doctrine) protects by default. $wpdb->prepare() in WordPress is mandatory.

Dependency updates. composer audit and npm audit in CI/CD pipeline. Dependabot or Renovate for automatic PRs with updates. Critical CVEs — patch within 24 hours.

Secrets and configuration. .env — never in Git. Secrets in production — via CI/CD environment variables (GitHub Secrets, GitLab CI Variables) or HashiCorp Vault. Leak detection: git-secrets, truffleHog in pre-commit hooks.

How We Work

1. Audit — code scanning, configuration review, dependency analysis, manual business logic verification.
2. Planning — vulnerability remediation plan, stack selection (CSP, WAF, rate limiting).
3. Implementation — TLS setup, CSP configuration, headers, Rate Limiting, WAF.
4. Testing — re-penetration test, load testing, false positive check.
5. Deployment and Monitoring — enable production CSP, set up alerts, train the team.

What's Included

• Report with found vulnerabilities and recommendations (PDF + code snippets)
• Ready TLS configuration (Nginx/Apache)
• CSP policy with Report-Only and production versions
• WAF and Rate Limiting setup
• Dependency update plan
• Access to monitoring tools (Sentry, Datadog)
• 30 days of post-audit support (consultations, fixes)

Timeline and Cost

The budget is calculated individually — contact us for a project evaluation.