2023-10-12 20:30:42
NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., (NASDAQ: NTCT) today announced the results of its DDoS Threat Intelligence Report of the first half of 2023. Cybercriminals launched approximately 7.9 million Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the first half of 2023, representing a 31% year-over-year increase.
Global events such as the Russia-Ukraine war and NATO candidacy have driven the recent growth in DDoS attacks. Finland was targeted by pro-Russian hacktivists in 2021 during its bid to join NATO. Turkey and Hungary were targets of attacks for opposing Finland’s candidacy. In 2023, Sweden faced a similar attack over its NATO candidacy, culminating in an attack volume of 500 Gbps in May. In general, ideologically motivated DDoS attacks targeted the United States, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Russia, among several other countries.
During the second half of 2022, NETSCOUT documented a trend in DDoS attacks once morest wireless telecommunications providers that represented a 79% global increase. This trend continued among Asia-Pacific wireless providers in the first half of 2023, with a 294% increase, which correlates with many broadband gaming users shifting their activity to 5G fixed wireless access as providers implement their networks.
NETSCOUT’s insights into the threat landscape come from its ATLAS sensor network, built over decades of working with hundreds of global Internet Service Providers, extracting trends from an average of 424 Tbps of internet search traffic, an increase of 5.7% in 2022. The company has seen ~500% growth in HTTP/S application layer attacks since 2019 and 17% growth in DNS reflection/amplification volumes during the first half of 2023.
“While global events and the expansion of the 5G network have spurred an increase in DDoS attacks, adversaries continue to evolve their approach to be more dynamic by leveraging bespoke infrastructure such as bulletproof hosts or proxy networks to launch attacks,” said Richard Hummel, manager Senior Intelligent Threat Officer at NETSCOUT. “The life cycle of DDoS attack vectors reveals the persistence of adversaries to find and weaponize new attack methods, while DNS water torture and carpet-bombing attacks have become more prevalent.”
Other key findings from the Q1 2023 DDoS Threat Intelligence Report include:
The Rise of Carpet-Bombing Attacks. A resurgence in carpet-bombing attacks has been occurring since the beginning of the year, with a 55% increase to more than 724 attacks daily, in what NETSCOUT believes is a conservative estimate. These attacks cause significant damage across the global internet, spreading to hundreds and even thousands of hosts simultaneously. This tactic often avoids activating bandwidth limit alerts, thus compromising possible action to mitigate DDoS attacks. DNS Water-Torture Attacks Become More Common. DNS water-torture attacks have risen nearly 353% in daily attacks since the beginning of the year. The top five industries targeted include wired telecom, wireless telecom, data processing hosting (data centers in general), e-commerce, mail order companies, and insurance agencies and brokers. Higher Education and Governments Are Disproportionately Attacked. Adversaries create their own infrastructure, or use different types of abuseable infrastructure to launch attacks. For example, open proxies have been consistently leveraged in HTTP/S application-layer DDoS attacks once morest targets in the higher education and government sectors. Meanwhile, DDoS botnets have frequently appeared in attacks once morest state and local governments. DDoS Sources Are Persistent. A relatively small number of nodes are involved in a disproportionate number of DDoS attacks, with an average IP address turnover rate of just 10%, while attackers tend to reuse abuse-prone infrastructure. While these nodes are persistent, the impact fluctuates as adversaries switch between different lists of abuseable infrastructure every few days.
Visit our interactive website for more information on NETSCOUT’s semi-annual DDoS Threat Intelligence Report. For real-time DDoS attack statistics, maps, and insights, visit NETSCOUT Cyber Threat Horizon. You can also find us at Facebook, LinkedIne Twitter.
About NETSCOUT
NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. (NASDAQ: NTCT) protects the connected world once morest cyberattacks and performance and availability disruptions through the company’s unique visibility platform and solutions powered by its pioneering deep packet inspection technology at scale. NETSCOUT serves the world’s largest companies, service providers and public sector organizations. Find out more at www.netscout.com or follow @NETSCOUT on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
©2023 NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. All rights reserved. NETSCOUT, the NETSCOUT logo, Guardians of the Connected World, Visibility Without Borders, Adaptive Service Intelligence, Arbor, ATLAS, Cyber Threat Horizon, InfiniStream, nGenius, nGeniusONE, Omnis and TrueCall are registered trademarks or trademarks of NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the US and/or other countries. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
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