DDoS attacks are still used as an instrument of unfair competition. They become more popular with each passing year. 2015 was not an exception – the Qrator Labs forecast, pessimistic as it had been, was surpassed. The company had predicted a 25% increase in the number of attacks, while its actual indicator grew by 100%.
As it has been before, the companies from ecommerce, banks, and social networks remain the primary targets for the adversaries. In addition, travel companies and real estate agencies were among the most frequent targets in 2015, which could also be connected with political reasons and economical pressures.
The most common types of attacks in 2015 – amplification type and combined attacks. BGP incidents are worth noting separately.
“In 2015 we observed network hijacking with the use of BGP route leaks as well as plenty of ordinary route leaks but we do not know for sure if they were used for criminal purposes. The risks connected with BGP vulnerabilities are quite high. This issue can be exploited for really severe attacks including their application as a cyber weapon”, – says Alexandr Lyamin, the head of Qrator Labs.
According to Wallarm’s calculations, an alternation of DDoS attacks with site hacking attempts is observed in 84% cases. This evidences the concurrence of actions and ubiquitous utilization of various attacks techniques by hackers. “It is highly probable that the finished DDoS attack will be followed with a site hacking attempt and the other way around. And a suddenly stopped DDoS attack may mean the hacking succeeded”, comments Ivan Novikov, the head of Wallarm. Thus, only the simultaneous use of multidedicated protection means (including DDoS and application attack protection, as well as BGP monitoring tools) can efficiently resist hackers
Wallarm noted that such reasons are relevant as for minor or average projects that always suffer the lack of expertise, as well as for major projects with large scale infrastructure, dynamically developing web applications and changing teams. Turbulence in human resources under conditions of crisis only contributes to this process.
It is prepared by Qrator Labs and Wallarm specialists and based on industry situation monitoring (in Russia and worldwide), and on statistics collected from their customers in 2015. In addition, this report includes data from independent company research conducted on behalf of Qrator Labs. The report also contains data collected from Qrator Labs’ service, Radar.Qrator.net. This is a unique global internet monitoring system; its data is accessed as a service by internet providers and telecom specialists.
Forecasts for 2016 and detailed statistics you can find in the original document here.
