Posted on January 27, 2016 by CELO NET
500 Gbps DDoS Attack Recorded in 2015, Biggest One Yet
[bold]500 Gbps DDoS attack surpasses last year’s 400 Gbps mark[/bold]
Arbor Networks’ 11th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report reveals that, for the first time in history, a company reported a DDoS attack that surpassed the 500 Gbps mark, something that was almost unbelievable only a few years back.
The report, which included responses from 354 industry professionals, showed that DDoS attacks, in general, grew in intensity, and besides the single 500 Gbps attack, companies also reported incidents that reached peak values of 450 Gbps, 425 Gbps, and also 337 Gbps.
Furthermore, 20% of the respondents also admitted they saw attacks of over 50 Gbps peak value while another quarter reported on peak attacks that reached over 100 Gbps, values much greater than in the past years.
Two-thirds of the total DDoS attacks targeted end customers while the other third of attacks were aimed at the ISP itself, and inadvertently affected its customers as well.
[bold]DDoS attacks targeting DNS services surpassed HTTP for the first time[/bold]
33% of all respondents said they were affected by DDoS attacks launched against cloud services. This figure went up from 29% last year and 19% two years ago, showing a greater dependency on online services and especially their “online” status.
Additionally, 44% of all respondents also said they saw more than 21 DDoS attacks in a single month while 9% also claimed they saw DDoS attacks carried out via IPv6 infrastructure for the first time.
Most of these attacks were attributed to “criminals demonstrating attack capabilities” while in second and third place came “online gaming-related” and “criminal extortion attempts.”
For the first time, DDoS attacks that targeted DNS services were more frequent than the ones targeting HTTP, and SIP/VoIP attacks also grew to 19% from 9% last year.
The increase of DDoS threats has also lit a fire under the firewall and DDoS mitigation business, as companies reported that 74% of their customers asked for more DDoS protection services during the past year.
Besides DDoS attacks, the Arbor Networks 11th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report includes information on other security threats affecting companies around the world. If you’re in the mood for 120 pages of security data, the report is available online for free.