Security News > 2023 > October > Global events fuel DDoS attack campaigns

Cybercriminals launched approximately 7.9 million DDoS attacks in 1H 2023, representing a 31% year-over-year increase, according to NETSCOUT. Global events like the Russia-Ukraine war and NATO bids have driven recent DDoS attack growth.

In 2023, Sweden experienced a similar onslaught around its NATO bid, culminating with a 500 Gbps DDoS attack in May. Overall, ideologically motivated DDoS attacks have targeted the United States, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Russia, and multiple other countries.

Global rise in DDoS attacks against telecom providers.

"While world events and 5G network expansion have driven an increase in DDoS attacks, adversaries continue to evolve their approach to be more dynamic by taking advantage of bespoke infrastructure such as bulletproof hosts or proxy networks to launch attacks," stated Richard Hummel, senior threat intelligence lead, NETSCOUT. "The lifecycle of DDoS attack vectors reveals the persistence of adversaries to find and weaponize new methods of attack, while DNS water torture and carpet-bombing attacks have become more prevalent."

This tactic often avoids triggering high bandwidth threshold alerts to begin timely DDoS attack mitigation.

A relatively small number of nodes are involved in a disproportionate number of DDoS attacks, with an average IP address churn rate of only 10%, as attackers tend to re-use abusable infrastructures.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/10/02/ddos-attacks-1h-2023/