DDoS Security • • 8 min read

7 Signs Your Website or Game Server Is Being Attacked

A DDoS attack rarely announces itself with a threatening email. Often, you only notice when your website slows down, your game server becomes unreachable, or customers start complaining. But if you know what to look for, you can often recognize an attack in its early stages — and prevent hours (or days) of unnecessary downtime.

Table of Contents

1. Why This Matters for Businesses 2. Sign 1: Extremely Slow Website or Server 3. Sign 2: Wave of 503/504/502 Errors 4. Sign 3: Unexplained Network Traffic Spikes 5. Sign 4: Firewall or Load Balancer Overheating 6. Sign 5: Flood of Suspicious IPs in Logs 7. Sign 6: Rubberbanding, Despawn or Mass Disconnects 8. Sign 7: Ransom Note or Threat 9. Take Immediate Action

Why This Matters for Businesses

In 2025, the number of DDoS attacks in the Netherlands was estimated at over 80,000 incidents — a 40% increase from the previous year. SMBs are a particularly popular target because they often have weaker security than larger enterprises.

The average cost of an hour of downtime? For an e-commerce store, that can quickly add up to €5,000–€15,000 in lost revenue. For a game server, it means angry players switching to a competitor.

By recognizing the signs early, you minimize the damage.

Sign 1

Your Website or Server Suddenly Becomes Extremely Slow

How to recognize it: Your website takes 20 seconds instead of 2 to load. Or your game server shows extreme lag (200ms+ ping) while your internet connection is fine.

Immediate action:

  • Check your server monitoring: do you see an unexplained spike in incoming traffic?
  • Contact your hosting provider.
  • Retslav offers 24/7/365 always-on DDoS filtering at L7 and L4 levels.
Sign 2

You Receive a Wave of 503, 504, or 502 Errors

How to recognize it: Visitors see error messages like "503 Service Unavailable", "504 Gateway Time-out", or "502 Bad Gateway".

Immediate action:

  • Check if your server is still reachable (via KVM-over-IP or SSH).
  • Contact your hosting provider. With Retslav: 99.99% SLA.
Sign 3

Unexplained Network Traffic Spikes

How to recognize it: Suddenly 50 Gbps of incoming traffic when you normally have 50 Mbps.

Immediate action:

  • Check the network graphs in your hosting panel.
  • Retslav has mitigated an attack of 9 Tbps.
Sign 4

Firewall or Load Balancer Overheating

How to recognize it: Your hardware firewall shows 100% CPU usage or your load balancer stops responding.

Immediate action:

  • Retslav's L7/L4 filtering operates at the network level — your firewall never has to process a million-connection attack.
Sign 5

Flood of Suspicious IP Addresses in Logs

How to recognize it: Thousands of requests from IPs in countries where you normally get no traffic.

Immediate action:

  • Retslav's DDoS filtering automatically blocks known and unknown attack patterns.
Sign 6

Game Server: Rubberbanding, Despawn, or Mass Disconnects

How to recognize it: Players get pulled back to previous positions, NPCs don't load, or players are kicked from the server en masse.

Immediate action:

  • Retslav game server hosting with built-in DDoS protection from €3/month.
Sign 7

Ransom Note or Threat

How to recognize it: An email: "Pay €500 in Bitcoin or we'll take your site down."

Immediate action:

  • Never pay.
  • Document and file a police report.
  • Retslav customers remain reachable even during RDoS attacks.

Take Immediate Action

You don't need to be a network engineer to protect your website or game server.

✓ Always-on DDoS Filtering

L7 and L4 filtering without configuration.

✓ 99.99% SLA

You stay online, even during attacks.

✓ Dutch & GDPR-proof

Data centers in Amsterdam and Brussels.

✓ Proven Mitigation

5+ PB malicious traffic blocked.

View our products → Contact us