India is the second-largest source of HTTP-based DDoS attacks after China. The security research firm Arbor Networks documented that the second quarter of 2017 saw an increase in these types of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, with India being responsible for 35% of them. .Internet DDoS attacks have become more frequent over the past year. In 2016, the number of DDoS attacks was about one million, compared to about two million in 2017. The increase in internet-based threats comes at a time when it is becoming more challenging for organizations to defend against them with traditional security techniques like firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS).The internet has given rise to new types of threats that are difficult or impossible to detect with legacy security methods.
There has been a significant increase in the amount of DDoS attacks and India ranks second as the largest source of HTTP-based DDoS attack traffic this year. A recent report found that China has replaced the US as the main source of HTTP DDoS attacks in Q3.
DDoS attacks can be used to bring down a website. This is how it works: The more internet traffic sent to the site’s server, the quicker the server will get overloaded and crash. HTTP is a type of web protocol and it’s used to send information back and forth when websites are loading data. HTTP-based DDoS attacks attempt to disrupt the server by making it unable to process regular, legitimate requests. If a server gets overloaded with too many requests, the service will reject them and this can lead to poor performance or interruptions for other users.
The number of China-based IP addresses on Cloudflare increased by a significant amount over the past year, up 29% from last year and 19% in the past quarter according to a company that provides infrastructure services. “India was the 2nd largest source of HTTP-based DDoS traffic after China, according to a report by Akamai. India’s share of such attacks increased to 61% in 2017, up from 40% in 2016.”
Incidents like a 2.5 Tbps DDoS attack in the third quarter make us even more proud of our internet infrastructure that can withstand these attacks and stay online for users around the world. The person was able to attack Wynncraft, a popular Minecraft server by exploiting the privilege vulnerability in its outdated software. This resulted in downtime for the server, but again it didn’t notice the attack.
Cloudflare’s John Graham Cumming says that they have noticed an increase in cyber-attacks by Russian-aligned groups and they are not just confined to Ukraine.
Cloudflare has seen a 114% increase in application layer DDoS attacks in the last year and has also experienced multiple 1 Tbps DDoS attacks towards customers in Q3.
“We had multiple cases of the same groups attacking state websites last week. HTTP DDoS attacks have increased by 111% since last quarter, which emphasizes their continued growth. They’ve also gotten cheaper & more accessible which contributes to their popularity.” According to Cumming “gaming and gambling was the most targeted industry this quarter, seeing 381% more incidents than last year.”
These ransom DDoS attacks continued to rise for the 3rd quarter in a row. In September, almost one-quarter of respondents reported receiving a ransom DDoS attack or threat.
According to the NetScout Systems report, the number of DDoS attacks launched in the first half of this year was over six million. The tendency of malware to take advantage of IoT devices, along with other common features in Dreading attacks like a sudden increase in bandwidth and volume, are making these types of attacks much more difficult to detect. The fundamental nature of DDoS attacks hasn’t changed much over the decades, but their scale has turned them into a much more serious global threat.
