GameShield is a security solution in the Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS series. It is designed for the gaming industry. GameShield aims to address issues, such as complex DDoS attacks and HTTP flood attacks that are faced by the gaming industry.
GameShield consists of two modules:
- Distributed anti-DDoS node: GameShield utilizes these nodes to defend against attacks greater than 600 Gbit/s.
- Game Security Gateway: GameShield can decode proprietary protocols. This allows GameShield to defend against HTTP flood attacks that are specific to the gaming industry.
How GameShield defends against DDoS attacks
Unlike the standard Anti-DDoS Pro or Anti-DDoS Premium data center, GameShield does not defend against attacks by using massive bandwidth, but uses the distributed anti-DDoS nodes. These nodes split and disperse attacks so that the attacks are not concentrated on a specific point. GameShield isolates attackers by using dynamic scheduling policies based on data generated by Software Development Kit (SDK) calls and traffic data.
How GameShield defends against HTTP flood attacks
In general, HTTP flood attacks in the gaming industry are different from those targeting websites. Website-targeted HTTP flood attacks are based on the HTTP or HTTPS. These protocols are standardized, and it is easy to perform data analysis and protocol analysis on these attacks. However, most of the protocols in the gaming industry are proprietary or uncommon. Therefore, to defend against game-targeted HTTP flood attacks, GameShield uses the professional cloud-based Game Security Gateway, which is formerly known as NetGuard, or NG for short.
Game Security Gateway establishes a firewall between user services and attackers. Game Security Gateway can distinguish real players from attackers based on the TCP connection behavior of attackers, post-connection dynamic information, and all traffic data.
- Game Security Gateway supports big data analytics. It analyzes user behaviors based on the characteristics of real users and directly intercepts abnormal clients with invalid protocols. It can also block specific traffic from regions in and outside China at any time by using blacklists or whitelists, which allow millions of entries.
- Game Security Gateway can establish an encrypted communication tunnel with SDKs. All
network communications between clients and servers use the encrypted communication
tunnel. Only the traffic authenticated by SDKs and Game Security Gateway is allowed.
This eliminates TCP-layer HTTP flood attacks (attacks that simulate protocol layer
attacks).
Note SDK 5.1.7 or later is required.