Team Internet defeats rising DDoS attacks with Vercara UltraDDoS Protect.
Combat DDoS attacks and the rising threat of ransom-type attacks.
Team Internet was founded in 2010 in Munich, Germany, and rapidly grew to become a leading provider of services in the direct navigation search market – where Internet users navigate to a website by typing a domain into the browser address bar, bypassing online search engines.
Team Internet’s ParkingCrew.com product enables customers to monetize their domain portfolio. Each visitor is shown a landing page that is auto-optimized based on several parameters including device, country, and language. The page also contains relevant links from high-performing ad providers. Customers receive a commission for every relevant click-through from their domains. Combined with its DNTX ad marketplace, Team Internet now looks after 35 million domain names.
“In our industry DDoS attacks are something that have always been there and are happening all the time. Most attacks are not actually targeting us but accidentally come our way because someone has registered a domain that already has a running DDoS attack against it. This domain gets put into our system and as a result, the attack gets switched over to us. It’s all part of the business,” says Mario Witte, Founder and CTO at Team Internet.
At first, Team Internet mitigated attacks by identifying where they were coming from and then stopping those sources. But as individual attacks grew in size from 1.5GB to over 10GB, it became more than the in-house team could handle. A hardware solution in the data center acted as a temporary solution, but mitigations had to be kept short, as traffic would be down to 70%.
Vercara UltraDDoS Protect on-demand DDoS protection.
Team Internet approached Vercara for the company’s UltraDDoS Protect On-Demand Solution, which provides a fully managed service and continuous protection from DDoS threats. This is a major feat as ParkingCrew.com has a huge and complex traffic pattern, meaning what its system calls regular production traffic is actually considered an ongoing attack for anyone else.
UltraDDoS Protect is mitigating attacks that are currently around 14-17GB, and they continue to grow in size. The frequency of a ‘normal’ sized attack is around every two weeks, and on a monthly basis, Team Internet comes under attack from what is considered a large one.
“After we partnered with Vercara, we came under attack but knew we could turn on the mitigation and not worry about it,” says Witte.
Vercara provided Team Internet with mitigation against ongoing and growing DDoS attacks over extended periods of time. Vercara protection means that Team Internet can confidently ignore ransom notes from DDoS attackers.
When Team Internet experienced its first (and only) targeted attack, it was disconcerting. That specific attacker’s method was to launch a small attack, then send through an email saying that worse will come if a ransom is not paid.
“When the note came, I went straight to my Vercara account manager who was unfazed and assured me that UltraDDoS Protect could handle the mitigation. This meant I could ignore the ransom note and sure enough, after the first attack there was nothing more. It was the best possible outcome, and without Vercara, I would probably have paid,” says Witte.
Vercara further provided value to Team Internet by delivering on its SLA guarantee to minimize false positives, something which occurs when a legitimate visitor triggers the protection system and it responds as if the visitor was part of a DDoS attack.
Team Internet can now move forward in confidence knowing that Vercara UltraDDoS Protect solution will mitigate against ongoing and growing DDoS attacks.
“Without Vercara, I would probably have paid the ransom.”
Mario Witte, CTO, Team Internet
