How to spot http flood on server

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isscbta
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Possible scenarios:
1. When the site is attacked from an IP address
2. When the site is attacked from multiple IP addresses

1. When the site is attacked from an IP address:
In case we receive a ticket informing us that some site works slowly, or gets an error 500 or similar - that could indicate that server is maybe under attack. So here we will describe steps on how to check and prevent this:

Go to the "SERVER" page and click "show: CPU / MEM / NET / DISK":

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Now click on "WEB" :

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Here you can see that almost all slots are filled with requests (W as waiting to be processed)

Scroll down a bit:

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We can see here that all waiting slots are filled from the same IP address.
In this example we also see that the bot attacked phpMyAdmin, probably trying to brute force a password.

Now we are going to block him.

Go to "FIREWALL" and then "ADD RULE"

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Now enter his IP address and enter port "80,443" in order to block him from both HTTP and HTTPS ports:

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That's it.

Just in case we want to brake his current HTTP/HTTPS (keep-alive) connections, we can also restart nginx:

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2. When the site is attacked from multiple IP addresses:
At first place as a quick-fix for this problem, we are going to suspend website domain in order to prevent attack from slowing-down whole server and all others sites on it.

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Obviously, this is only a short-term fix. If the attacks continue, you'll need to take some additional steps, such as adding the website behind CloudFlare.

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