DDoS Assaults Target UK As Bot Attacks Hit New High

The global threat of DDoS attacks has reached new levels as criminals around the world set up damaging new threats to target businesses of all sizes.

And the UK is one of the biggest targets for DDoS criminals, according to a new report from security experts Imperva.

The firm’s latest Global DDoS Threat Landscape Report found that the UK is the second-most targeted nation, being hit by 9.2 percent of all DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2016, behind only the United States (50.3 percent).

Damaged

Overall, South Korea was found to be the main source of DDoS attacks around the globe, with 29.5 percent of all attacks originating there, due in part to a steep increase in botnet activity in the country, Imperva said.

The data also showed that over 38.6 percent of the attacks from South Korea were launched against Japanese websites, while another 30.3 percent targeted US-hosted sites.

Russia (10.8 percent) and Ukraine (10.1 percent) made up the top three originators, showing the increasing risk of Eastern European attacks, particularly in the use of Generic!BT malware—a damaging Trojan used to compromise Windows computers.

The rate of attacks was also found to be increasing, as the study found that every other site that came under attack was targeted more than once, with the number of sites being hit between two and five times growing from 26.7 percent to 31.8 percent.

This is in part due to the increasing use of sophisticated DDoS bots which are able to slip through standard security challenges, commonly used to filter out attack traffic.

Some of these advanced bots have evolved to be able to accept and hold cookies, while others are also able to parse JavaScript, allowing them to slip through normal detection methods.

“Every DDoS attack mitigated is an invitation for the attacker to try harder,” noted Imperva’s Igal Zeifman. “This is the reality of DDoS protection business and the common motive for many of the trends we are observing in the DDoS threat landscape today.”

DDoS attacks have become an increasingly worrisome threat for organisations around the world as the number of threats continues to rise.

Recent research from Akamai discovered a 149 percent year-on-year increase in DDoS attacks, with the company’s customers reporting that they were being hit by 24 DDoS attacks during the three months covered by the report.

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