How To Stop DDoS Flood Attacks with Javascript Verification on Heroku

DDoS Attack Mitigation on Heroku

Web-based SAAS applications are uniquely vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

First

Compared to attacks that exploit TCP flaws or other lower network level network responses the HTTP request/response cycle of web apps is much more expensive.

Second

Compared to other types of DDoS attacks, it can be much more of a challenge to filter out legitimate vs. illegitimate traffic. Consider an attack that uses a compromised browser extension to hammer a remote server: the requests would be virtually indistinguishable from user generated traffic.

What Users Will View

The image below is what will be shown to users who request a CAPTCHA protected URL on your Expedited WAF protected site.

Prerequisites

What you need to get started:

  1. Expedited WAF add-on is setup in front of your application.

How To Add CAPTCHAs to your Heroku App

Add individual URLs to be presented with a CAPTCHA challenge from the Protected Pages screen of your Expedited WAF dashboard:

Notes

  • CAPTCHA protection is optional. It is disabled by default and will only apply to the specific URLs that you include in a rule.
  • Adding the root / as a URL will CAPTCHA protect your entire site, but typically this isn’t needed.

Resources

Learn more about DDos Attacks