Security News > 2021 > January > Several DDoS Attack Records Broken in 2020

Several companies that provide services for mitigating distributed denial-of-service attacks reported seeing records being broken in 2020.

In a report published on Tuesday, Akamai said it saw the largest global DDoS extortion campaign, more customers attacked than in any other previous year, the largest ever attack in terms of million packets per second, and a record number of new customers that urgently needed protection due to an ongoing or imminent attack.

"While most of the world saw an unprecedented global health crisis, malicious actors saw new vulnerabilities and opportunity. It is seldom that annual activity is so deeply affected by one event, but such is the case with 2020 DDoS attack activity and trends. It is no coincidence that this milestone number of global attacks comes at a time when businesses have relied so heavily on online services to survive."

Kaspersky reported seeing an 88% increase in the number of DDoS attacks launched in 2020 compared to 2019.

"For instance, in the first quarter of 2020, we identified a three-fold increase in attacks on educational and administrative resources, as they were extremely important. If people see conflicting messages about the virus and what preventive measures can be taken, they may look for official sources of information for more assured guidance. Many schools and universities also shifted to online lessons. It's worth noting that the growth is quantitative, not qualitative: the share of sophisticated attacks that require an attacker to have skills to find the most effective attack vector has practically not changed."

Tom Emmons, principal architect at Akamai, told SecurityWeek that they too noticed a rise in the total number of DDoS attacks launched last year, but he believes this data can be misleading "Because some customers and industries are more frequently and regularly targeted by DDoS attacks - easily swaying the data depending on attacker activity."

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