Verisign just released our Q1 2015 DDoS Trends Report, which provides a unique view into online distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack trends from mitigations on behalf of, and in cooperation with, customers of Verisign DDoS Protection Services, and the security research of iDefense Security Intelligence Services.
Many notable observations were made: Verisign mitigated more DDoS attacks in Q1 2015 than in any other quarter in 2014, including seven percent more than Q4 2014. The public sector and financial services industries continued to experience an uptick in attacks, with each constituting 18 percent of total Q1 2015 mitigations. As noted in last quarter’s report, Verisign believes financial services firms and various international governing organizations may be targeted as part of political activism, or hacktivism. In addition, the ready availability and low cost of DDoS toolkits and DDoS botnets-for-hire is making it easier for actors to launch attacks.
Additional highlights of various trends observed in the Q1 2015 DDoS Trends Report:
- Over half of all attacks peaked at more than one gigabit per second (Gbps), 34 percent of attacks peaked between one and five Gbps and nearly 10 percent of attacks peaked at more than 10 Gbps.
- Volumetric DDoS attack sizes peaked at 54 Gbps/18 million packets per second (Mpps) for User Datagram Protocol (UDP) floods and 8 Gbps/22 Mpps for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)-based attacks.
- IT Services/Cloud/SaaS was the most frequently targeted industry in Q1, representing more than one third of all Verisign mitigation activity.
As DDoS attacks continue to grow in complexity, it is necessary for security professionals to understand why threat actors are using this increasingly effective form of online attack. The Q1 2015 DDoS Trends Report feature article, “The Many Motivations behind Today’s DDoS Attacks,” takes a look at the history of DDoS attacks, as well as provides a high level overview of attack motivations to help organizations prepare for these disruptive threats.
For more on DDoS trends in Q1, access the full Q1 2015 report here.
To read more about what we saw in Q4 2014, including the increase in DDoS attacks in the public sector, which accounted for 15 percent of all mitigations in that quarter, you can access that report here.
See additional highlights from Q1 2015 in the SlideShare presentation below.
Be sure to check back in a few months for the Q2 2015 DDoS Trends Report.
