Average DDoS Attack Volumes Have Trebled in Past Year
Cybercrime on the rise: Average attack volumes grew by 194%, and hyper-scale volumes by 150% year-on-year
Link11, a leader in cloud-based anti-DDoS protection, has released DDoS statistics for Q4 2018, revealing that the volume and complexity of attacks continued to grow in Europe during the final quarter of 2018. While Link11’s Security Operations Center (LSOC) registered 13,910 attacks in Q4 (12.7% down compared to Q3), the average attack volume grew by 8.7% to 5Gbps, and 59% of attacks used multiple attack vectors.
Key findings of Link11’s Q4 DDoS report include:
- Average attack volumes grew by 194% in 12 months: in Q4 2018, average attack volumes were 5Gbps, nearly treble the 1.7Gbps average seen in Q4 2017. Attackers are using increasingly powerful botnets comprising misused cloud servers, hijacked IoT devices and embedded devices.
- Hyper-scale attacks hitting hard: in Q4, the LSOC registered 13 attacks with volumes over 80Gbps. The biggest attack reached 173.5 Gbps – well over double the volume of the biggest attack seen in Q4 2017, which hit 70.1 Gbps.
- More complex multi-vector attacks: the majority (59%) of attacks in Q4 2018 were multi-vector attacks, compared with 45% in Q4 2017. The most complex attacks seen in Q4 used up to nine different attack vectors. The three most commonly used reflection amplification vectors were CLDAP, DNS reflection and SSDP.
The LSOC also observed that attacks occurred most frequently on Saturdays and Sundays, with the level of attacks declining during the business week. Attackers targeted organizations most frequently between 4 pm and midnight Central European Time, with attack volumes at their lowest between 6 am and 10 am CET.
"The increase in the impact and complexity of attacks continues unabated," said Marc Wilczek, COO of Link11. "When faced with DDoS bandwidths well over 100 Gbps and multi-vector attacks, traditional IT security mechanisms are easily overwhelmed, and unprotected companies risk serious business disruption, loss of revenue and even fines. To stop these attacks disrupting business operations, organizations need proactive protection that tracks and responds to evolving attack scenarios and patterns automatically, using advanced machine-learning techniques.”
Current data on DDoS attacks, attempts, and numbers can be found in the Link11 DDoS blog.
Current articles
Stay updated on current DDoS reports, warnings, and news about IT security, cybercrime and DDoS protection.
Follow Link11 on Twitter
A simple visualization of how the Underground Cybercrime Economy cashes in on data and DDoS attacks. To learn more,…
9 Retweets 10
Read MoreHow to protect your business and website from DDoS attacks during the biggest sales period of the year:…
5 Retweets 6
Read MoreWhat are DDoS Attacks and how do cybercriminals use them as weapons to shut down IT infrastructures? And more impor…
7 Retweets 5
Read MoreThis is why (and how) you should block bots on your business website (includes a list of most common bot attacks):…
13 Retweets 9
Read MoreWhat is Web Application Firewall, why do you need it and how does it protect your company? Learn more by reading ou…
3 Retweets 5
Read More@RandyLoss Hah, you weren't the only one saying that.
0 Retweets 0
@vxtrade Your company might ;)
0 Retweets 1
@deckhand25 He is not, but close enough! ;)
0 Retweets 1
What would you do if you received a 180 000€ DDoS extortion email warning to exceed your web infrastructure defense…
1 Retweets 4
Read MoreGet a detailed and up to date overview of the global DDoS threat landscape by taking a look at our DDoS Report from…
6 Retweets 5
Read MoreRT @cloudtweeters: #CyberResilience has been redefined! We've partnered with @Link11GmbH so our VARs can provide customers with intelligen…
3 Retweets 0
@SecurityParalok Link11 DDoS Protection can help!
0 Retweets 0