AWS Shield Advanced introduces DDoS attack flow logs for enhanced visibility

Introduction of Flow Logs

AWS has introduced flow logs as a feature of Shield Advanced, which allows users to capture important traffic metadata during DDoS attacks. This marks a significant change from previous methods that relied on information from multiple sources post-attack.

How Flow Logs Work

The flow logs record details such as the volume of traffic, the geographical origins indicated by the srccountry and location fields, and the actions taken by Shield during an attack. This data integrates with existing Amazon services like Amazon S3, CloudWatch Logs, or Data Firehose for easy access and analysis.

Benefits of Enhanced Visibility

These logs provide users the ability to reconstruct traffic patterns and identify attack origins more effectively than traditional aggregate metrics. Users can also verify how Shield mitigated the attacks by reviewing the logged actions.

Integration with Analysis Tools

Flow logs can be queried using Amazon Athena or routed to third-party SIEM platforms, which assists organizations in maintaining security without needing to deploy new infrastructure. The use of existing monitoring and analysis tools streamlines the visibility into DDoS defense strategies.

Future Developments

Currently, Shield Advanced provides infrastructure-layer attack flow logs for Elastic IPs, with plans to support additional resource types in future updates, enhancing its defensive capabilities against DDoS threats.