DDoS Attacks Are up 125% Every Year, Report Reveals

Content delivery company Akamai’s popular State of the Internet Security Report for the first quarter of 2016 has revealed that there has been a 125% increase in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, year over year.

Akamai’s trusted State of the Internet Security Report has revealed a few startling facts concerning the cyberthreat landscape of the internet.

For one, every year sees a 125% increase in DDoS attacks. A 35% increase in the average DDoS attack duration has also been registered. In Q1 of 2015, the average attack lasted nearly 15 hours. A year later, that duration has peaked beyond 16 hours.

In Q1 2016 alone, Akamai was able to record a total of 4,523 DDoS attacks. That number shows a significant increase from last year’s quarter at 3,693 attacks. These attacks and the increase were primarily targeting the same customers rather than new targets canvassed by cybercriminals.

Q1 saw an average of 15 attacks for every targeted customer. That average had nearly doubled this year, to 29 attacks in the first quarter of 2016.

In the past, attackers would move on to new targets when stumbling upon a secured website or network. Now, they choose to barrage the secured target in the hops that their defenses would fail. The most commonly targeted websites are often gaming networks and domains. The smallest notable change in latency could have an adverse effect on online gamers and gaming.

An additional factor for the increase in DDoS attacks are the easily available DDoS-for-hire websites peddling their services. Anyone with bitcoin can now launch several, simultaneous attacks from an easy-to-use interface offering an array of attacks.

One particular customer with the unfortunate distinction of being the most targeted DDoS target was attacked with 283 DDoS bombardments, in the first quarter of 2016. That’s 3 attacks, every day.

The really massive DDoS attacks, those over 100 Gbps/ second, are becoming more common as well. Q1 2015 saw eight such attacks, whereas this year, that number has gone up to 19 attacks, an increase of 1375%.

What’s even more startling is that the last quarter of 2015 had “only” 5 such attacks, whereas the subsequent three months, this year, has already seen 19 100 Gbps attacks.