An increase in Distanted Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks has been noted throughout the current year, and the attacks are becoming increasingly powerful.
DDoS attacks are carried out against websites or online services with the aim of taking them offline. The attackers direct traffic from an army of botnet hundreds of thousands of computers, servers and other internet‑connected devices that they have taken control of – via malware – toward the target they want to take offline.
An attack can last only a few seconds or some hours or days and prevent legitimate users from accessing the websites – for that period.
DDoS attacks have been in our lives for many years, but this time it is different. We are facing a pandemic in which most people do everything via the internet – they work, learn, shop and many other things – so the situation is much more serious.
However, a new threat intelligence report from the cybersecurity firm Netscout indicates that this is exactly happening, as cybercriminals are carrying out more DDoS attacks than ever. The company stated that 4.83 million DDoS attacks were carried out in the first half of 2020, a 15% increase compared to 2019.
And while sometimes there are political or economic motives behind carrying out DDoS attacks, in many cases those who control the campaigns simply start them because they can.
Bad news is that DDoS attacks are also increasing in size, with the power of the strongest attacks increasing by 2.851% since 2017 – giving attackers the ability to “hit” networks much faster than ever.
The reason why DDoS attacks are becoming stronger is because they are becoming more complex, using many different types of devices and targeting different parts of the victim's network. Indeed, attackers are learning that the most basic DDoS attacks are becoming less effective, so they discard them for some stronger ones.
One thing that helps DDoS botnets is that much of the source code for them is freely available. The most notorious case is the Mirai botnet, which leaked a number of web services online in late 2016. The source code for Mirai was leaked online and has since served as the backbone for building various botnets.
The growing number of connected devices also serves to increase the potential power of botnets. Attackers can take control of unsecured computers and servers. But the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices exacerbates the situation since these devices are connected to the internet and often have little or no security protocols. These devices can be used in attacks.
Some botnets like Gafgyt are powered only by IoT, as attackers try to exploit their lack of protection.
