Important service information: Protect your Miniserver against DDoS attacks


5th November 2016 in Technology

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. In recent weeks large scale DDoS attacks have been carried out against numerous Internet services, resulting in them being temporarily and repeatedly unavailable. Some of the services affected included Spotify, Twitter, Paypal and more.

Our support has been contacted with inquiries from some customers whose Miniservers use the standard Internet port 80 and were subject to similar DDoS attempts. Find out more about what happens when an attempt is made to attack a Miniserver in this way and on how you can protect yourself against DDoS attacks:

What happens if a Miniserver is attacked?

The Miniserver has its own firewall and beyond this further safety and stability features that we rarely talk about. If a DDoS attack is carried out against a Miniserver and its network interface is overloaded by requests, the Miniserver will detect this and automatically reboot. That way, the system is up and running again after a few seconds.

Repeated DDoS attacks on a Miniserver may lead to a number of reboots in a short period of time that affect the accessibility and responsiveness of the device. After a reboot the Miniserver works as usual without limitations. There is no danger of data loss or system and data breaches through these reboots.

How can I protect my Miniserver against DDoS attacks?

DDoS attacks usually affect devices that use standard ports, such as 80, 443 and 8080. As part of our documentation and training, we always recommend using a non-standard port, for instance 7777 or even better one greater than 50000. Changing the http port makes is less likely for botnets to find your Miniserver and thus prevents random DDoS attacks / reboots. You can find more information on changing the ports here: Network configuration >

We strongly recommend that all Loxone users and partners change the Internet port of the Miniserver, even if the Miniserver is not affected by reboots. These attacks are becoming more common and everyone ought to protect themselves.

If your Miniserver is still affected by reboots after you’ve changed the port or if you need any additional help please contact our support team >