Akamai reports big increase in DDoS attacks
Content delivery network (CDN) Akamai Technologies’ latest State of the Internet report revealed a sharp rise in DDoS attacks across the globe in the second quarter (Q2) of 2016.
Akamai’s [link url=”https://content.akamai.com/PG6852-q2-2016-soti-security.html” title=”Q2 2016 State of the Internet Security Report”] reported a huge year-over-year increase in DDoS attacks of 129 percent from Q2 2015 to Q2 2016.
The report also noted that DDoS attacks increased on a quarterly basis, but to a lesser extent. There was a 9 percent increase from the first quarter (Q1) of 2016 to Q2 2016.
DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS attack involves multiple compromised systems (i.e. connected devices at various locations), which are utilized in unison to target a single system. The attack attempts to cause a Denial of Service (DoS), or effectively shut down the targeted system due to the influx of traffic. DDoS attacks often utilize malware or viruses that allow for the takeover of multiple remote computers.
All told, Akamai mitigated 4,919 DDoS attack events in Q2 2016, which represents a 9 percent increase from the 4,523
attack events in Q1.
What do all of those metrics in the State of the Internet Report mean, and how are they calculated? Find out more at https://t.co/Ia5pzig8qY
— StateOfTheInternet (@akamai_soti) September 29, 2016
New attack bandwidth record
The largest DDoD attack of the quarter peaked at 363 Gbps, which set a new attack bandwidth record for the cloud services provider. Additionally, a total of 21 attacks exceeded 30 million packets per second (Mpps), which set a
new quarterly record. The 21 mega-attacks represented a 250 percent increase quarter-over-quarter.
Gaming industry hit hard
According to Akamai, the gaming industry took on more than half of all DDoS attacks in Q2 — 57 percent.
Other industries targeted: Software & technology (26 percent); financial services (5 percent); media & entertainment (4 percent); and Internet & telecom (4 percent).
As part of its latest report, Akamai [link url=”https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/akamai-q2-2016-state-of-the-internet-ddos-trends-infographic.pdf” title=”offered up some in-depth breakdowns”] of different aspects of its data.
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