Situation:
While managing a production web server, I noticed a severe performance degradation
caused by excessive disk usage. Investigation revealed that an external actor was exploiting
the application’s behavior to flood the server’s log files through repeated failed requests.
Task:
I needed to quickly neutralize the attack to restore server responsiveness, prevent further
disk exhaustion, and implement safeguards to protect against similar future incidents.
Action:
I deployed Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter malicious traffic and
configured IP-based rate limiting rules to throttle abusive request patterns. After securing
the perimeter, I performed a system cleanup by removing oversized log files and configured
proactive disk monitoring alerts to detect abnormal growth early.
Result:
The targeted attack was successfully mitigated, restoring normal server performance and
preventing future resource exhaustion events. The implemented monitoring policies also
strengthened our ability to respond quickly to any similar incidents moving forward.