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BackThe Rising Wave Of DDOS Attacks: What You Need To Know
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In today's world, where having a digital connection is essential for personal and professional interactions,
The word "DDoS" has started to appear more frequently in discussions concerning cybersecurity. However, one term that has surfaced lately far more than ever in the context of discussions related to cybersecurity is "DDoS." What is a DDoS attack? Why is it gaining momentum in the talk presently? Let's dig deeper into the depths to understand why this time it is more important than ever to know Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
What is DDoS ( Distributed denial of service)?
DDoS attacks basically mean flooding the target system, be it a server or just a website, with producing and sending an overwhelming volume of internet traffic. It is done in a bid to disable it, thus robbing the authorized users of access.
A DDoS attack is designed to draw down the targeted resource's ability to function—memory, bandwidth, or CPU power—thus making the network or service unavailable to valid users. An attack might cause substantial disruption, financial loss, and injury to the reputation of a company.
How a DDoS Attack works:
This is a DDoS attack that works based on flooding a server or network with traffic coming from a number of botnets. Once the attacker has accessed a botnet, this process is used to relay new commands to every bot, thus in control of the computers. The botnet zeroes in on the IP address of the victim and requests each bot to make fake requests to the target. Thus, the threshold for the attacked server or network is surpassed. Since each bot is, in actuality a legitimate internet device, it becomes very difficult to distinguish attack traffic from real user activity.
The Surge in DDoS Attacks:
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have significantly grown in 2023 and 2024, putting businesses in a number of industries at serious risk. DDoS attacks rose 50 percent from Q1 last year to Q1 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
- DNS-based DDoS attacks increased to 80% from year to year and is the most significant form of attack.
- HTTP DDoS attacks saw a 93% year-over-year increase.
- Network-layer DDoS attacks (L3/4) increased by 28% annually.
Many well-known real-time DDoS attacks have been launched in the past against major organizations and corporations. Here are a few noteworthy instances:
- 28 Feb 2018, one of the largest developer platform, and a code hosting website has experience a DDOS attack with a significant damage to their assets. The attack used the amplification method via "Memcached" which overloads the website traffic. Reaching up to 1.35 terabits per second (TBPS), it periodically caused the GitHub web platform to shut down for twenty minutes.
- An American-based multinational Company, in September 2017, announced that the company was hit by a massive DDoS attack that peaked at a bandwidth of 2.54 TBPS for several minutes. The attack was said to target Google's cloud services.
- In September 2020, an on-demand computing platform stated that there was one powerful DDoS attack that had a peak bandwidth of 2.3 terabits per second (TBPS), placing it within the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded so far.
- 21 October 2016, a software company and one of the major DNS service provider, disrupted the internet as a whole. IoT devices infected with the Mirai botnet were the main target of the attack. Users experienced lengthy outages as a result of this incident, which affected a number of well-known websites and services, including major social and streaming platforms.
Why Awareness Rising?
- Changing Threat Environment: Attackers continuously innovate ways and vectors; multi-vector attacks, which entail DDoS together with other forms of attacks such as malware and data breaches. There is much need for people to be more conscious of this evolution and prepared for it.
- Enhanced Internet Connectivity: The DDoS attack surface has increased with IoT. Many Internet of Things devices, especially linked appliances and smart home gadgets, do not have robust security measures installed and can easily be compromised to become a part of the botnet.
- Growing Frequency and Complexity: DDoS attacks have, in the near past been fairly recurrent and even sophisticated. Tools and techniques in the attackers' inventories have constantly updated to become more efficient in conducting massive attacks.
- Impact on the Economy and Operations: Organizations are now becoming increasingly sensitive about the operational and economic implications of DDoS attacks. There may be enormous losses in terms of revenue loss, lost time, and efforts to recover. In addition, reputation damage and loss of stakeholders' confidence may have long-term implications. The organizations are now being compelled to spend on enhanced security and response solutions due to this increased awareness about the implications of DDoS attacks.
RNT is committed to helping organizations arm themselves with information and support to create a posture that would be secure in this new, complex world of cybersecurity. We partner with the top product companies to execute such DDOS attacks to increase the resilience of the mitigation solutions implemented and/or identify the gaps. We have been able to provide innovative solutions meant to help organizations approach cyber risk in the right way.