Crafting Shields: Defending Minecraft Servers Against DDoS Attacks

**Executive summary:** This article describes the threat of DDoS attacks against Minecraft servers — outlining common symptoms (spikes in traffic, port congestion, unresponsiveness), impacts on players and server operators (downtime, financial and reputational loss), detection indicators, basic and advanced mitigation measures, and advocates a commercial DDoS protection solution (Gcore) to prevent and respond to such attacks.