How I Built a Real-Time DDoS Detection Engine with Python, Docker, and iptables Have you ever wondered how websites protect themselves from attackers who send millions of requests trying to crash the server? That is called a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service), and in this post I will show you how I built a system that detects and blocks these attacks automatically — in real time. This project was built as part of the HNG DevOps Stage 3 task. We were asked to protect a Nextcloud cloud storage platform running on Docker from suspicious traffic — without using any existing security tools like Fail2Ban. Everything had to be built from scratch. What the Project Does and Why It Matters Imagine you run a shop. Normally 10 customers walk in per minute. Suddenly 5,000 people rush in at the same time — not to buy anything, but just to block the door so real customers cannot enter. That is exactly what a DDoS attack does to a web server.…