Akamai Q2 2016 report, the number of DDoS attacks has doubled in one year

According to the Akamai Q2 2016 report, the number of distributed denial of service attacks has doubled over the last 12 months.

The DDoS attacks continue to be privileged attack vectors for crooks, according to the last report published by Akamai (Akamai Q2 2016 report) the number of distributed denial of service attacks has doubled over the last 12 months.

In Q2 Akamai experts have observed a 129 per cent year-on-year increase in total DDoS attacks, the company has mitigated in Q2 a total of 4,919 attacks.

One of these DDoS attacks hit a media company and reached a 363 Gbps, anyway 10 attacks reached out over 100 Gbps.

A close look at the type of attacks reveals that NTP reflection attacks almost quadrupled, increasing 276 percent over the same time frame.

Companies in the gaming and software industries are privileged targets of hackers that leverage on DDoS as an attack vector.

Another worrisome trend is related to web application attacks that increased of 14 percent in Q2 2016 over Q1. SQL injection (44 per cent) and Local File Inclusion (45

The Akamai experts observed that retail industry was mostly targeted (40 per cent) with web application attacks in Q2 2016.

The Top 10 source countries for DDoS Attacks is Q2 2016 is led by China, with a considerable increase in frequency compared with Q1 2016, followed by the US.

“This quarter we saw Turkey end its streak as a top 10 source country for DDoS attacks, a trend that began in Q4 2015. After the US, in second place at 17%, the rest of the top 10 list was populated by countries seldom seen as DDoS sources. Taiwan (5%), Canada (4%), and Vietnam (4%) rounded out the top five. Canada appeared for the first time this quarter.” reads the report.

Below the Key findings of the Akamai Q2 2016 report, enjoy it!

DDoS attacks, Q2 2016 vs. Q2 2015

• 129% increase in total DDoS attacks
• 151% increase in infrastructure layer (layers 3 & 4) attacks
• 276% increase in NTP reflection attacks (a record high)
• 70% increase in UDP flood attacks

DDoS attacks, Q2 2016 vs. Q1 2016

• 9% increase in total DDoS attacks
• 10% increase in infrastructure layer (layers 3 & 4) attacks
• 47% increase in UDP flood attacks
• 37% decrease in attacks > 100 Gbps: 12 vs.

Web application attacks, Q2 2016 vs. Q1 2016

• 14% increase in total web application attacks
• 197% increase in attacks sourcing from Brazil (new top source country)
• 13% decrease in attacks sourcing from United States (previous top source country)
• 7% increase in SQLi attacks

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Akamai Q2 2016 report, DDoS)