A website that suddenly stops loading could be dealing with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a surge in legitimate visitors, or a fault at its hosting provider. The symptoms can look the same from a browser. Website operators can narrow down the cause by checking when errors began, what happened to traffic at the same time, and what their provider can see upstream. CISA’s DDoS response guide
What is a DDoS attack?
A DDoS attack sends traffic or requests from multiple sources to exhaust the resources an online service needs to operate. Those resources might be the network connection, the number of sessions a system can accept, or the computing power needed to handle requests. When capacity runs out, genuine visitors may see slow pages, failed logins, or a site that never loads. A botnet, a group of hijacked devices under coordinated control, can supply the traffic. CISA’s explanation of DoS and DDoS · FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center on botnets
An online store can lose checkout access even while cached product pages still load. A flood that saturates the network can make the whole domain unreachable. The visible impact depends on which resource fills up first. Cloudflare’s overview of DDoS attack types
Why an attack can be over before you open the dashboard
Cloudflare’s Q3 2026 threat report counted 18.2 million network-layer DDoS attacks mitigated across its own network between July and September. It reported that 96% lasted less than 10 minutes. The figures describe Cloudflare’s observations and how brief those network-layer events were. If a service recovers before you investigate, the timestamps in monitoring alerts and provider logs can help you look at the affected window. Cloudflare’s Q3 2026 DDoS Threat Report
How to tell a DDoS attack from other kinds of downtime
Start with the first failed request and compare the minutes on either side. Look for several signals that line up. A 503 Service Unavailable response, for example, tells you the server was temporarily unable to handle a request. Maintenance and overloaded applications can both produce it. MDN’s HTTP 503 reference · Cloudflare’s list of possible DDoS indicators
| What you observe | What to check next |
|---|---|
| Requests or bandwidth jump as errors start | Compare traffic patterns with the usual baseline. Look for repeated requests to the same endpoint and ask your provider whether its monitoring detected an attack. |
| Errors begin after a release or configuration change | Compare the deployment timestamp with application and database logs. Check whether errors started before any change in traffic. |
| Traffic rises after a sale, newsletter, or widely shared link | Compare the timing with campaign activity and referrers. Check whether visitors follow the paths you would expect from that promotion. |
| Your host or CDN reports an incident | Match the affected service, region, and time against your own outage. A status update about a different component may explain little about your site. |
A provider status page is useful because it names the affected component. On November 12, for example, Cloudflare documented a 33-minute incident involving the ability to enable or disable DNSSEC signing. Its notice describes a configuration issue and does not identify a DDoS attack. Cloudflare’s November 12 incident timeline
What to do when your website goes down
- Record the scope and timing. Note the first error, time zone, affected URLs, and whether the issue affects the entire site or a specific function such as checkout. Check from another network and review your host or CDN status page.
- Save the evidence you already have. Keep the relevant error logs, request counts, and bandwidth graphs. Compare them with CPU, memory, and recent deployments. A host or network provider may see traffic that never reached your application.
- Contact the provider that handles incoming traffic. Give your CDN, host, or internet provider the timestamps and affected services. Ask which traffic patterns they observed and which mitigations they can apply. Monitor ordinary visitor access while any mitigation is active.
Visitors usually have less information than site operators. An official status page or a timestamped support update is a better starting point than social posts assigning a cause. Site owners should keep monitoring authentication and other security alerts while restoring availability. CISA notes that an attacker can use a DDoS attack to distract from separate malicious activity. CISA’s incident response guidance
Related reading How to check whether WoW Forever is down.
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