Security News > 2020 > June > How the pandemic affected DDoS attack patterns, global internet traffic

There has been a shift in internet traffic patterns coinciding with an increase in DDoS and other types of network attacks in recent months as organizations across industries quickly transitioned to remote workforces and individuals under stay-at-home orders began relying on the internet more heavily, according to Neustar.

The pandemic effect was clear in traffic to specific websites, such as the 250% increase in queries for a popular collaboration platform as lockdowns commenced and the sharp rise in traffic to the website of a N95 masks manufacturer.

A noticeable rise in traffic was noticed in mid-March correlating with the dates that schools and organizations began to implement isolation policies, and query numbers continued to rise afterward, with a sharp uptick about a month after isolation policies had begun to take hold.

Concurrent with these changes in traffic patterns, there was dramatic rise in DDoS and other attacks across virtually every metric measured, including increases in the overall number of attacks; attack severity, which considers the volume of attack; and attack intensity.

While many DDoS and other types of attacks focus on corporate assets, there has also been an increase in DNS hijacking, a technique in which DNS settings are changed to redirect the user to a website that might look legitimate but often contains malware disguised as something useful.

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