Half Of Enterprises Worldwide Hit By DDoS Attacks

New data illustrates how distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks remain a popular attack weapon -- and continue to evolve.

Kelly Jackson Higgins

January 27, 2015

1 Min Read
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If you still think distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are merely old-school, outdated, pain in the neck disruption campaigns waged by hacktivists or script kiddies, think again: about half of all enterprises were hit with a DDoS attack last year and most ISPs and enterprises also suffered more stealthy DDoS attacks aimed at flying under the radar.

Some 90% of ISP and enterprise respondents in Arbor Networks' 10th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report say they experienced application-layer (versus network connection-sapping) DDoS attacks, and 42% say they were hit by DDoS attacks that used a combination of bandwidth-sapping, application-layer, and state exhaustion methods. HTTP- and DNS are the top two targets of application-layer attacks, according to the report, which was released today.

But so-called volumetric attacks, which bombard a targeted organization or ISP's network connections, still outnumber application-layer attacks, accounting for about two-thirds of all DDoS attacks in the past year. DDoS attacks are also becoming more frequent:  38% say they had been hit by more than 21 DDoS attacks per month in 2014, twice the number of organizations as in 2013.

Read the rest of the article on Dark Reading.

About the Author

Kelly Jackson Higgins

Executive Editor at Dark Reading

Kelly Jackson Higgins is Executive Editorat DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise Magazine, CommunicationsWeek, Virginia Business magazine, and other major media properties. Jackson Higgins was recently selected as one of the Top 10 Cybersecurity Journalists in the US. She began her career as a sports writer in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and earned her BA at The College of William & Mary. Follow her on Twitter @kjhiggins.

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