Blog 2
HOW AWS WAF HELPS SCALE TO WIN BLOCK DDoS ATTACKS
During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election season, Scale to Win faced several large-scale DDoS attacks. To protect its platform, the company implemented Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF to filter and block malicious traffic before it could reach the backend infrastructure.
Key Highlights
- Used Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF to inspect and filter traffic at edge locations.
- Configured the Application Load Balancer (ALB) to accept requests only from CloudFront.
- Implemented a secret header mechanism to prevent attackers from bypassing security layers.
- Separated human traffic and machine-to-machine traffic to apply different protection strategies.
- Combined Rate Limiting and CAPTCHA challenges to mitigate automated attacks.
- Leveraged AWS WAF Bot Control to detect and block CAPTCHA token reuse across botnets.
Results
- Reduced the impact of large-scale DDoS attacks.
- Prevented direct attacks against the Application Load Balancer.
- Improved application security and traffic filtering capabilities.
- Maintained service availability for legitimate users during attack periods.
Personal Takeaway
In my opinion, this case study demonstrates that effective DDoS protection is not simply about adding more infrastructure resources. A layered security architecture using CloudFront, AWS WAF, and intelligent traffic management can significantly improve system resilience against modern cyber threats.