Security News > 2020 > September > DDoS Attacks Skyrocket as Pandemic Bites

Neustar's Security Operations Center saw a 151 percent increase in DDoS activity in the period, including one of the largest and longest attacks that Neustar has ever mitigated - that attack came in at 1.17 terabits-per-second, and lasted five days and 18 hours.

DDoS attacks are getting bigger, with what Neustar said is a "Noticeable spike" in volume: The number of attacks sized 100Gbps and above grew a whopping 275 percent.

Overall, small attacks sized 5Gbps and below represented 70 percent of all attacks mitigated by Neustar between January and June.

The firm added that other aspects contribute to the rise in attacks as well, like the fact that firms are often heavily reliant on VPNs these days for secure remote access: "VPN servers are often left vulnerable, making it simple for cybercriminals to take an entire workforce offline with a targeted DDoS attack."

An attack of more than 800 millions-of-packets-per-second was recorded during the analysis period - compared to the previous record of 500 Mpps. These methods include an increase in burst and pulse DDoS attacks, broadening abuse of built-in network protocols such as ARMS, WS-DD, CoAP and Jenkins to launch DDoS amplification attacks that can be carried out with limited resources and cause significant disruptions, NXNS attacks targeting DNS servers, RangeAmp attacks targeting content delivery networks, and a resurgence of Mirai-like malware capable of building large botnets through the exploitation of poorly secured IoT devices.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/ddos-attacks-skyrocket-pandemic/159301/