New figures reveal that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks rose significantly in the final quarter of 2015, up 10% compared to the previous quarter and 149% YoY. According to US cloud services provider, Akamai, most of the attacks (97%) were infrastructure layer attacks. Those perpetrating the attacks continued to rely on ‘stresser/booter-based botnets’, which launch reflection attacks by bouncing traffic off servers. These types of attacks have a time limit, so there was a notable fall in the average attack duration, however, more attacks were launched, with victims suffering repeat targeting. Gaming companies were heavily targeted (54%) followed by the software and technology industry (23%). Those targeted in web application attacks included retailers (59%), media and entertainment (40%), and hotel and travel (40%).
New figures reveal that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks rose significantly in the final quarter of 2015, up 40% compared to the previous quarter and 149% YoY. According to US cloud services provider, Akamai, most of the attacks (97%) were infrastructure layer attacks. Those perpetrating the attacks continued to rely on ‘stresser/booter-based botnets’, which launch reflection attacks by bouncing traffic off servers. These types of attacks have a time limit, so there was a notable fall in the average attack duration, however, more attacks were launched, with victims suffering repeat targeting. Gaming companies were heavily targeted (54%) followed by the software and technology industry (23%). Those targeted in web application attacks included retailers (59%), media and entertainment (10%), and hotel and travel (10%).