For the third quarter of 2017, Kaspersky Lab published its DDoS Intelligence report, which found the preference for complex DDoS attacks, instead of large-scale onslaughts, increased Linux botnets.
Q3 witnessed an increase in a number of countries, where resources are targeted, as well as a growing number of attacks on gaming and new financial services (such as ICOs).
According to Kaspersky Lab experts, resources in 98 countries were subjected to DDoS attacks in the third quarter, whereas the geography of attacks was limited to 86 countries in the previous reporting period.
Hosting inexpensive data centers
The most popular host countries for botnet command servers this quarter included: Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, China, South Korea and the United States.
The most popular countries for hosting inexpensive data centers are China, South Korea, and the United States.
The share of Linux botnets is still growing, accounting for 70% of attacks in the last quarter.
The percentage of complex attacks such as SYN and HTTP-DDoS is also increasing, while the proportion of other methods is falling accordingly.
Kirill Ilganaev, head of Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab, said: “Entertainment and financial services – businesses that are critically dependent on their continuous availability to users – have always been a favorite target for DDoS attacks.
Significant financial losses
“For them, the downtime caused by an attack can result not only in significant financial losses but also reputational risks that could result in an exodus of customers to competitors.
“It’s not surprising that gaming services with multi-million turnovers attract the attention of criminals and that new types of financial sites have come under attack.
“What is surprising, however, is that many companies still don’t pay enough attention to professional protection against DDoS attacks.
“The recommended approach for these companies is to delegate protection from DDoS attacks to a reliable supplier with deep knowledge of cyber threats and the methods of combating them, and to reassign the IT resources that are freed up to the development of the business.”
In addition, Q3 saw a significant increase in the number of mixed attacks, in which criminals used multiple methods simultaneously.
4Written from press releases by Leah Alger
