For many critical communications service providers, network bandwidth is becoming more of an issue. Bandwidth is a way to measure the maximum capacity of a network to carry data packets, i.e. it’s important if you want to ensure your users can make & receive calls pretty much anywhere they go. Typically, bandwidth is represented in a number of different measurements. For example, there might be bits per second (bps), or KM per second (KMps). Depending on the measurement, the numbers can differ greatly. Bandwidth does not measure network speed – although many people mistakenly think it does.

The network has been infiltrated by so much malicious traffic that it cannot function or communicate normally. Your regular traffic has decreased.

Bandwidth has released a statement about the DDoS attack.

“We’re looking into a technical problem that is impacting some of our customers. Currently, incoming and outgoing calls may occasionally experience interruptions or sound quality issues but the majority of our customers won’t ever experience these problems. If you’re having any problems with your phone call service, let us know right away so we can fix it.”

David Morken is the founder of Bandwidth and chairman; CEO. He reached out to clients and colleagues with a blog post that said, “We know how much damage we’ve done—but we also know this has been a very trying time for some of you.”

Recent data from Akamai show that the number of DDoS attacks has quadrupled in the first half of 2021, and threatens to continue to grow. A denial-of-service attack is a type of cyberattack where one or many machines are made unable to function or process requests.

Imperva has analyzed the 5,600 network attacks that it’s customers encountered to find that attackers have increased the intensity of their attack while also reducing their time spent. The latest Imperva State of a Cyber Nation security report reveals 1 Tbps attacks are becoming more common. Attacks can usually last as little as 8 minutes with hackers attacking the same enterprise repeatedly.

Data breaches and hacking attacks can be hard for companies to respond to right away, David Elmaleh, the Chief Product Officer of Imperva’s Services department, says.

“Large-scale cyberattacks have caused major disruptions in the last few years. Cyber attackers often have a greater capacity to cause damage than those they are after, especially because these attacks are not limited to just one target.” he said. ” Attacks are on the rise and with that, it is becoming harder & harder to protect your data. However, regardless of how much bandwidth is available, they can’t keep up with the ever-evolving sophistication of attackers.” Google may have experienced a high volume of attacks last year, but not new records were set. Imperva reports that both maximum bandwidth and packet levels are rising steeply. There are many cyber attacks that have been linked to the epidemic and it has given attackers lots of services to target. For example, employees can be targeted for their credentials or organizations can be manipulated through compromised email servers. Businesses could be hard hit by a sudden hike in the price of coffee, while $ 100 would make the network too slow to use.

When defenders keep up-to-date with the latest developments, they are more likely to be able to block an attack in time. This is why Imperva’s research shows that attacks on enterprises who have properly ensured their security tend not to succeed. However, attackers see short high-bandwidth attacks as the best way to create disruption. Elmaleh said that these are called pulse or pulse-wave attacks and allow attackers to resolve existing solutions and shut down the application. When hackers are going after the same thing, it’s difficult to guard against them because they might hit it again.

Given the increase in DDoS attacks, companies are looking for innovative ways to safeguard themselves. The use of Artificial Intelligence has come up with a good solution; ‘short attacks’ have been proposed as an efficient and cost-effective way to test and monitor the target company’s system, before developing a detailed strategy that will minimize their efficiency.

Imperva also found some new habits being practiced by attackers – including sending an increased amount of traffic using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). TCP traffic can seem legit, making attacks hard to detect. A lot of people know TCP as the communication protocol used most often on the web – it requires a sender & receiver to perform a communication session through a process called “handshaking.” TCP traffic is expected to increase by 2020, having climbed from 10% in 2016 to 32% this year.

UDP is the most common type of attack traffic every day and it accounts for 43% of all attack traffic. It’s commonly used to send domain names (DNS) and video streaming services. The third most frequently used traffic here is TCP, followed by HTTP, which together account for just 25%.

The IT sector was the one most hit by the attack. It was 29% of total company computers that were compromised. The business / financial industries were second and third with 25% and 22% of occurrences respectively.

Bad Bots Mos

Unfortunately, there are more than just automated Denial-of-Service attacks that could disrupt a website. Automated bots make up about two thirds of the traffic to websites these days – which poses an extensive threat. Less than 36% of the average daily traffic to a website is made up of requests from people

The best way to avoid these types of attacks is by monitoring the site for DDoS and bot traffic. The latter often uses large amounts of data, for instance, to request an online service in an unreasonable volume, or reading online price lists to then trigger a system response that affects the sales offer.

“These advanced bots are attempting to escape the common defenses with their attempts to carry out vicious activities under the radar,” Barracuda researchers said in a recent report. “The most common type of these ‘persistent bots’ are those that impersonate humans”

Barracuda and Imperva’s numbers are significantly different from default traffic levels. It may indicate that the number of users is going to be higher in the future or that these companies have vastly different usage habits. A study done by Imperva found that bots accounted for 41% of traffic in 2020 and Barracuda predicted a 64% increase for bot traffic.