CC (Challenge Collapsar) attacks and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are both cyberattack methods aimed at disrupting services, but they differ in targets and techniques.
Differences:
-
Target:
- DDoS attacks overwhelm the entire network or server infrastructure (e.g., bandwidth, routers) to exhaust resources.
- CC attacks specifically target application layers (e.g., web servers, APIs) by simulating legitimate user requests to exhaust server processing capacity.
-
Technique:
- DDoS uses massive traffic from multiple sources (bots) to flood the network.
- CC mimics human-like interactions (e.g., repeated login attempts, form submissions) to exhaust server resources like CPU or memory.
-
Impact:
- DDoS often causes network-level outages, making services unreachable.
- CC degrades application performance, leading to slow responses or crashes under high load.
Connections:
Both are volumetric attacks leveraging distributed bots, but CC is a subset of DDoS focusing on application-layer vulnerabilities. Mitigation requires layered defenses, such as traffic filtering (e.g., Tencent Cloud Anti-DDoS) and rate limiting (e.g., Tencent Cloud Web Application Firewall).
Example:
- A DDoS attack might flood a gaming server’s IP with UDP packets, causing lag or disconnections.
- A CC attack could repeatedly query an e-commerce site’s payment API to exhaust backend resources, making checkout unavailable.
For protection, Tencent Cloud offers Anti-DDoS Pro and WAF to mitigate both attack types.