Security News > 2021 > March > Akamai Sees Largest DDoS Extortion Attack Known to Date
The recently observed assaults haven't reached the magnitude of the largest DDoS attacks the company has mitigated to date, which have peaked at 1.35 Tbps in 2018 and at 1.44 Tbps in 2020, but three of them are among the six biggest volumetric DDoS attacks Akamai has ever encountered.
Akamai says the increased number of bigger volumetric DDoS attacks is the new norm.
Among these attacks, there were two of the largest known DDoS extortion attacks to date, Akamai notes.
"The most recent extortion attack - peaking at more than 800 Gbps and targeting a European gambling company - was the biggest and most complex we've seen since the widespread return of extortion attacks that kicked off in mid-August 2020," the company reveals.
Akamai has noticed that DDoS attackers are expanding their reach across geographies and industries, with the number targeted entities now being 57% higher than last year.
"In one attack, the threat actors targeted nearly a dozen IPs and rotated through multiple DDoS attack vectors trying to increase the likelihood of disrupting the back-end environments. In fact, 65% of DDoS attacks launched against customers were multi-vector," Akamai says.