[Q1 2015]
akamai.com
= malicious activity: key trends
• Number of DDoS attacks continues rise, up to more than double the total in Q1 2014 • Attackers increasingly favor a low and slow approach – a typical attack had lower bandwidth but long duration • The gaming industry attracts more DDoS attacks than any other • Seven of eight mega-attacks directly or indirectly targeted gaming • 35% of all DDoS attacks this quarter were focused on the gaming industry
• DDoS traffic was dominated by infrastructure-layer attack methods • China rose to largest DDoS source, with the share of US attacks falling dramatically • Web application attacks concentrated on retail and media verticals 2 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= major DDoS statistical trends
• Overall frequency of DDoS attacks continued to rise • Up more than 35% from Q4 2014 • More than double the number of attacks recorded in Q1 2014
• DDoS attacks were smaller, but longer and more frequent • Typical attack had drastically lower volume and bandwidth than 2014 • Below 10 Gbps • 29-hour average duration
• Eight mega-attacks with more than 100 Gbps traffic • Largest had 170 Gbps peak, more than largest attack of Q4
3 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= DDoS attack makeup
Infrastructure-layer attacks dominated DDoS methodologies, accounting for 91% of all recorded attacks: • SSDP attacks were the most exploited infrastructure-layer vector, representing >20% of attacks • SSDP attacks are a new vector first observed in Q3 2014 • Uses unsecured home Internet devices such as routers as reflectors
• SYN floods fell to second place with 16% of all attacks • However, seven of eight mega-attacks involved SYN floods
Application-layer attacks continued to be disfavored due to the rise of reflection-based attack methods • Most-common application-layer attack is HTTP GET , accounting for 7.5% of DDoS activity
4 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= DDoS attack makeup
= targeted industries
• Gaming remained the most targeted industry, attracting 35% of all attacks • Attacks on other relevant verticals appeared to be indirect attacks on gaming as well • Massive attacks on large console gaming networks in December 2014 continued into January • Seven of eight >100 Gbps mega-attacks recorded in Q1 were targeted at gaming, either directly or indirectly
• Software and Technology suffered 25% of attacks • Slight decrease of 1% from last quarter
• Internet and Telecoms suffered 14% • Slight increase of 3% from last quarter
5 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= source countries
• China continued to top the list of DDoS source countries • Accounted for 23% of DDoS traffic • Substantial increase from 18% in Q4
• Germany was the second-largest source of DDoS traffic • 17% of recorded DDoS traffic originated from Germany • Substantial increase from 12% last year
• USA fell to third place • Accounted for just 12% of DDoS traffic in Q1 2015 • Dramatic decrease from 32% in Q4
• Decreases in percentages do not represent a drop in DDoS traffic from these countries • DDoS traffic sources have increasingly diversified – other countries are producing more DDoS traffic, rather than the US producing less 6 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= web application (non-DDoS) attacks
Akamai collected and analyzed data from the KONA Web Application Firewall service. This data focused on web application attacks and their patterns: • More than 52 million SQL injection attacks observed, accounting for 29% of attacks • Two campaigns against travel and hospitality companies were a main contributor • Local File Inclusion (LFI) accounted for 66% of web application attacks • Primarily resulting from massive volumetric campaign against two large retailers • 63% of LFI attacks observed during week 12 alone
• More than 50% of all attack IPs originated from the US • Retail and Media/Entertainment industries were subjected to the greatest number of attacks
7 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= Q1 2015 State of the Internet –Security Report
Download the Q1 2015 State of the Internet Security Report • The Q1 2015 report covers: ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ ⁄ ⁄
Analysis of DDoS web application attack trends Bandwidth (Gbps) and volume (Mpps) statistics Year-over-year and quarter-by-quarter analysis Attack frequency, size, types and sources Security implications of the transition to IPv6 Mitigating the risk of website defacement and domain hijacking DDoS techniques that maximize bandwidth, including booter/stresser sites Analysis of SQL injection attacks as a persistent and emerging threat
9 / [The State of the Internet] / Security (Q1 2015)
= about stateoftheinternet.com
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StateoftheInternet.com, brought to you by Akamai, serves as the home for content and information intended to provide an informed view into online connectivity and cybersecurity trends as well as related metrics, including Internet connection speeds, broadband adoption, mobile usage, outages, and cyber-attacks and threats.
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Visitors to www.stateoftheinternet.com can find current and archived versions of Akamai’s State of the Internet (Connectivity and Security) reports, the company’s data visualizations, and other resources designed to put context around the ever-changing Internet landscape.
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