Comtest, local representative of Netscout, has completed a report titled: 1H 2020 Threat Intelligence Report, which deals with the dramatic impact cybercriminals have had during the COVID-19 pandemic. Attackers focused on COVID-era lifelines such as healthcare, e-commerce and educational services with complex, high-throughput attacks designed to overwhelm and quickly take them down.
“The first half of 2020 witnessed a radical change in DDoS attack methodology to shorter, faster, harder-hitting multi-vector attacks that we expect to continue,” stated Richard Hummel, threat intelligence lead, Netscout. “Adversaries increased attacks against online platforms and services crucial in an increasingly digital world, such as e-commerce, education, financial services and healthcare. No matter the target, adversary, or tactic used, it remains imperative that defenders and security professionals remain vigilant in these challenging days to protect the critical infrastructure that connects and enables the modern world.”
Key findings from the report include:
• Cybercriminals launched record-breaking attacks at online platforms and services during the pandemic. More than 929 000 DDoS attacks occurred in May, representing the single largest number of attacks ever seen in a month. 4,83 million DDoS attacks occurred in the first half of 2020, a 15% increase.
• Bad actors focused on shorter, more complex attacks. The increase in complexity and speed, coupled with the decrease in duration, gives security teams less time to defend their organisations from increasingly sophisticated attacks.
• Organisations and individuals bear the cost of cyber-attacks. To determine the impact that DDoS attacks have on global Internet traffic, Netscout developed the DDoS Attack Coefficient (DAC). It represents the amount of DDoS attack traffic traversing the Internet in a given region or country during any one-minute period. If no traffic can be attributed to DDoS, the amount would be zero. DAC identified a top regional bandwidth of 2,8 Tbps in EMEA. This demonstrates the ‘DDoS tax’ that every Internet-connected organisation and individual pays, since cybercriminals do not pay for bandwidth.
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