Over 8.4 Million DDoS Attacks Reaching Up to 622 Gbps Detected in 2019

• Around two-third of customer-facing enterprise systems had experienced nearly 23,000 DDoS attacks per day last year.
• The most powerful attack was recorded during H2 2019, reaching up to 622 Gbps.

DDoS attacks have grown in frequency over the last five years and to sum it up, there were more than 8.4 million DDoS attacks in 2019 alone.

What does the report say?

A report from NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence has disclosed that around two-third of customer-facing enterprise systems had experienced nearly 23,000 DDoS attacks per day - which amounts to 16 attacks every 60 seconds. The most powerful attack was recorded during H2 2019, reaching up to 622 Gbps.

DDoS attacks are primarily aimed at disrupting online services. The attack usually involves a target system being bombarded with illegitimate traffic generated by slave systems. This exhausts the resources, thus allowing the attackers to take control of the system.

Which are the main targets?

Netscout’s report highlights that wired and mobile telecommunications, data processing and hosting providers were the most common targets of DDoS attacks last year. In addition to these, there has also been an uptick in DDoS attacks against satellite communications, chemical manufacturing, and trades including computer equipment sellers and vehicle vendors.

Most commonly used botnets

Mirai and its variants continue to be a widely used botnet to enslave IoT devices. In total, there has been a 57% increase in the variants. Close to 103,000 unique samples of Mirai-based malware were detected during H2 2019. Many of these samples used brute-force attacks in exploit attempts.

Conclusion

Threat actors are now weaponizing new attack vectors and leveraging mobile hotspots to compromise IoT devices. They are getting more sophisticated by using a minuscule portion of the available vulnerable devices to carry out a successful attack.