Challenges
DNS DDoS Attacks: Disrupting the Internet at Its Core
Domain Name Resolution (DNS) DDoS attacks target one of the most critical components of the internet. Attackers increasingly rely on DNS water torture attacks and DNS reflection amplification attacks to overwhelm authoritative and recursive DNS servers. These attacks generate massive volumes of randomized, malformed, or spoofed DNS queries that evade traditional, threshold-based DDoS defenses.
For service providers and enterprises, DNS DDoS attacks result in outages, degraded user experience, SLA violations, and reputational risk—while static defenses struggle to adapt to rapidly changing attack behavior.
NETSCOUT provides real-time, adaptive DDoS protection to stop sophisticated DNS attacks and keep critical services online.
Outcomes That Matter
Protecting The Service That Runs the Internet
Maintain DNS Availability During DDoS Attacks
Detect and mitigate DNS DDoS attacks before DNS resolution fails and critical services are impacted.
Stop DNS Attacks With Precision
Block large-scale volumetric floods, high-rate and low-rate DNS attacks while allowing legitimate DNS queries to pass.
Reduce Operational Risk and Response Time
Automate detection and mitigation of DNS DDoS attacks to minimize manual intervention and false positives.
NETSCOUT’s Solution and How It Delivers Value
Intelligent, Automated Defense
NETSCOUT delivers purpose-built DNS DDoS protection using pervasive network visibility, adaptive analytics, and automated mitigation across enterprise and service provider environments.
NETSCOUT’s Arbor DDoS Protection solutions automatically detect DNS DDoS attacks, including DNS water torture, NXDOMAIN floods, malformed DNS queries, and DNS reflection amplification—even when attacks remain below traditional alert thresholds.
Detection is powered by NETSCOUT ATLAS Threat Intelligence Feed (AIF) that continuously identifies known attack participants, abused DNS reflectors, and emerging DNS attack patterns. As DNS DDoS attacks evolve, mitigation automatically adapts without manual tuning.
When a DNS attack is detected, Arbor DDoS Protection products automatically mitigate them using DNS-specific countermeasures.
This coordinated approach blocks malicious DNS traffic precisely while preserving legitimate name resolution—ensuring DNS availability even during large-scale or highly evasive DNS DDoS attacks.
Related Products
Arbor Sightline DDoS Attack Detection Solution
AI/ML Driven Foundation for Networking & Security Visibility, Threat Management, DDoS Attack Detection & Revenue Generation
Arbor Threat Mitigation System for DDoS Attacks
Adaptive mitigation protects your customers and ensures service availability and performance
Arbor Edge Defense
Automated, on-premise, in-line, always-on, stateless, Artificial Intelligence powered DDoS protection.
Resources
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a DNS DDoS attack?
A DNS DDoS attack overwhelms DNS infrastructure with malicious queries, preventing legitimate users and applications from resolving domain names.
What is DNS water torture attack?
DNS water torture is an application-layer DNS DDoS attack that floods DNS servers with randomized, non-existent domain queries to exhaust server resources.
What is a DNS amplification attack?
DNS amplification is a reflection-based DDoS attack that exploits large DNS responses and spoofed source IPs to generate massive traffic volumes.
How does NETSCOUT stop DNS DDoS attacks?
NETSCOUT combines adaptive detection, global threat intelligence, and DNS-aware mitigation to block malicious traffic while preserving legitimate DNS queries.
