DDoS protection

[PaperBag]

Hello all,

I'm currently working on a project where DDoS protection is something essential, every second of downtime is a loss of members and funds.
The project I'm working on is game content hosting for Garry's Mod.
As you may have seen garrysmod.org is most of the time slow/down, this is caused by poor DDoS protection and continued DDoS attempts, I don't want this to happen to my host.

I was wondering if anyone could give me hints on how to protect my CentOS powered server against DDoS attacks. I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Arco

[Omniscient]

Do you have server root? If you do install and run a kernel based firewall. A popular one is iptables.
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Network/IPTables

You want to create a ruleset that's very strict.

Are you running Apache? If so run mod_geoip which will allow you to htaccess block by country. It's very handy as many countries are just more trouble than they are worth.

Security is multi-layered. There is the 3 S's. Server, Services, and Site. You want a layer of protection at each level.

[PaperBag]

Do you have server root? If you do install and run a kernel based firewall. A popular one is iptables.
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Network/IPTables

You want to create a ruleset that's very strict.

Are you running Apache? If so run mod_geoip which will allow you to htaccess block by country. It's very handy as many countries are just more trouble than they are worth.

Security is multi-layered. There is the 3 S's. Server, Services, and Site. You want a layer of protection at each level.

That was very helpful to me, thanks a lot!

Edit:
What iptables ruleset do you recommend?

[Grizzly]

Are you going to be running a Dedicated Server right off the bat? Or will you be using Shared/VPS?

[PaperBag]

Are you going to be running a Dedicated Server right off the bat? Or will you be using Shared/VPS?

I'm currently running a dedicated server.