Businesses Must Prepare For Bigger And Badder DDoS Attacks In 2017

Large terabit-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks will become the top security priority for businesses and the new norm in 2017, according to Corero Network Security.

The company predicts that we will see more sophisticated and targeted threats due to an increased frequency of zero-day reflection and amplification attacks, resulting in greater disruptions to businesses and governments.

DDoS warning

The infamous Mirai botnet, which has been responsible for a string of cyber attacks in recent months after the source code was released online, is also expected to evolve as hackers look to take advantage of the plethora of poorly-secured IoT-connected devices in use around the world.

And we’re not just talking about its size (it is currently believed to stand at around 300,000 connected devices), but also its complexity. New methods of launching DDoS attacks are likely to be added as hackers adapt the original code and then make them open source and available for anyone to take advantage of.

“While the Mirai botnet is certainly fearsome in terms of its size, its capacity to wreak havoc is also dictated by the various attack vectors it employs. If a variety of new and complex techniques were added to its arsenal next year, we may see a substantial escalation in the already dangerous DDoS landscape, with the potential for frequent, Terabit-scale DDoS events which significantly disrupt our Internet availability,” said Dave Larson, CTO/COO at Corero Network Security.

“While the motivations for such attacks are endless, the range of potential political and economic fallouts from such attacks could be far-reaching. Our entire digital economy depends upon access to the Internet, and so organisations should think carefully about business continuity in the wake of such events.”

Finally, Larson believes Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have a key role to play: “By working together with governments and the international community, ISPs can strengthen the underpinning infrastructure of the Internet and significantly reduce the volume of malicious traffic flowing across their networks.”

Quiz: What do you know about the biggest and baddest attacks in technology history?