DDoS attacks on the rise

Security group Akamai’s second quarter 2015 review of the Internet reports a record number of Distributed Denial of Services attacks in Q2-2015 – up 7 percent on the preceding quarter – and cautions that online gaming sites appear to be a popular target for the criminal organisations behind the assaults.

On a year-on-year comparative basis, DDoS activity more than doubled, up 132 percent, which is cause for concern. 35 percent of the current quarter’s assaults were on internet gaming sites.

Some of the attacks reached very powerful levels, with “mega-attacks” on the rise; there were 12 reported attacks which exceeded 100 Gbps in malicious traffic in the quarter, and the largest experienced was over 240 Gbps that was sustained for over 13 hours.

However, Akamai has also flagged the trend toward less powerful attacks which are of longer duration, pointing out that over the quarter the average length of assaults was 20.6 hours…a 9 percent year-on-year increase in capability.

John Summers, vice president, Cloud Security Business Unit at Akamai, said: “The threat posed by distributed denial of service (DDoS) and web application attacks continues to grow each quarter. Malicious actors are continually changing the game by switching tactics, seeking out new vulnerabilities and even bringing back old techniques that were considered outdated.”

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