TMCnet Feature

Leading distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection services provider Prolexic Technologies has released attack data collected during the third quarter (Q3) 2011. This quarterly attack report indicates a change in tactics by attackers and provides a deep dive into current DDoS trends and threats.

Key highlights of the Q3 2011 Prolexic attack report shows that the highest volume of attacks occurred during the period of August 19-25 and August was the month with the highest number of attacks overall. And that the top three countries from which attacks originated were China, India, and Turkey with China-based IP addresses accounting for 55 percent of attacks. The report indicates that online gambling was the most heavily targeted industry with an average traffic speed of 1.3 Gbps and average attack duration of 1.2 days.

Additionally, the service provider claims to have mitigated 66 percent more attack traffic this quarter compared to Q3 2010. Of all attacks mitigated by the company, approximately 24 percent were SYN floods, 22 percent were ICMP floods, and 19 percent were UDP (News - Alert) floods, indicating a change in attack tactics, said Prolexic.

Also, as per this report, the volume of packets-per-second (PPS) has almost quadrupled compared to Q3 2010, illustrating a significant increase in the size and diversity of attacks over the past 12 months. Furthermore, the report indicates that network layer (Layer 3) attacks were the most common, making up 83 percent of total attacks with application layer attacks (Layer 7) accounting for the remaining 17 percent.

In a statement, Paul Sop, chief technology officer at Prolexic, said, “Prolexic technicians are on the front lines fighting DDoS attacks every day, therefore, we’re able to gather valuable data on the tactics, types, origins, and targets of these attacks.”

According to Sop, the Q3 2011 data is indicative of several key trends that online companies should take seriously, especially as the busy holiday shopping season approaches.

“First and foremost, I think the nature of DDoS attacks are changing,” Sop said. “Attackers know most businesses have some level of DDoS protection and they are now starting to directly target DDoS mitigation equipment, most of which do not have the capacity to process the high packet per second attacks that are being used,” noted Sop.