Report: Ddos attacks are getting bigger and more targeted
Security company Arbor Networks says in its annual worldwide infrastructure security report that DDOs attacks have reached up to 500Gbps in the past year. In addition, these attacks more often target specific, vulnerable services of a website.
Arbor Networks prepared the report on the basis of a survey it conducted in October 2015 among 354 respondents from ISPs, hosting parties and mobile providers, among others. The majority of these service providers are based in the US or the EU. The largest DDoS attack reported by an ISP and requiring further investigation was 500Gbps. This was followed in size by attacks of 450Gbps, 425Gbps and 337Gbps. In 2014, twenty percent of organizations reported attacks of more than 50Gbps, last year a quarter of the respondents reported attacks of more than 100Gbps.
Darren Antsee, chief of security at Arbor Networks, told the BBC that the magnitude of the attacks is not the most remarkable. He indicates that it is more remarkable that there are more small DDOs attacks, aimed at parts of a site that are easier to shut down. Attackers would first make an analysis of a website before carrying out an attack. In most cases, according to Antsee, it would be criminals who show what they are capable of. This was also reflected in the working methods of the DD4BC group, of which Europol recently arrested two members.
The report further shows that most ddos attacks target port 80, which is used for http traffic. Attacks on dns port 53 and https port 443 follow in second and third place, respectively. Also in the top ten are the ports for Xbox Live and Minecraft, which would show that attacks are more common in relation to online games. Furthermore, the US is number one when it comes to targets, but also as a country of origin. Finally, seventy percent of mobile providers indicate that they have had DDO attacks on their customers.
In recent weeks, noticeable attacks have been carried out, especially in Ireland, including on the lottery and on government websites. At the end of last year, major short-lived attacks took place on the Internet’s dns root servers. Security researcher Bruce Schneier then posted a comment on his blog expressing the suspicion that someone was testing the strength of his DDOs attacks.
spikes in ddos attacks per year, according to Arbor Networks