CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai
Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud
services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and
business applications, today announced the availability of the
Q4 2014 State of the Internet – Security Report. The report
is produced by Akamai's Prolexic Security Engineering and Research
Team (PLXsert), leading professionals in distributed denial of
service (DDoS) protection and cloud security services and
strategies. This quarter's report, which provides analysis and
insight into the global attack threat landscape including DDoS
attacks observed across the PLXrouted network, can be downloaded at
www.stateoftheinternet.com/security-report.
"An incredible number of DDoS attacks occurred in the fourth
quarter, almost double what we observed in Q4 a year ago," said
John Summers, vice president, Cloud
Security Business Unit, Akamai. "Denial of service is a common and
active threat to a wide range of enterprises. The DDoS attack
traffic was not limited to a single industry, such as online
entertainment that made headlines in December. Instead, attacks
were spread among a wide variety of industries."
Akamai also observed a 52 percent increase in average peak
bandwidth of DDoS attacks compared to Q4 a year ago. Large packets
of unwanted network traffic can quickly sap an enterprise's ability
to respond to legitimate customers, resulting in denial of service
outages. Most unprotected sites cannot withstand a typical DDoS
attack. As a result, DDoS attacks have become part of the common
cybersecurity threatscape that all enterprises with an online
presence must anticipate in a risk assessment.
DDoS-for-hire and the rise of reflection and multi-vector
attacks
Resourceful DDoS-for-hire booter suites took a
low-investment approach by tapping into reflection-based DDoS
attacks. Nearly 40 percent of all DDoS attacks used reflection
techniques, which rely on Internet protocols that respond with more
traffic than they receive and do not require an attacker to gain
control over the server or device.
Widespread availability of for-hire DDoS services allowed
low-level, non-technical attackers to purchase ready-to-use DDoS
services. The expansion of the DDoS-for-hire market also promoted
the use of multi-vector campaigns, as the competitive market drove
attack innovation. Significantly more multi-vector attacks were
observed – 88 percent more than in Q4 2013. More than 44 percent of
all attacks used multiple attack vectors.
Changing global distribution of DDoS targets and
sources
The timing of DDoS attacks was distributed more
evenly in Q4, a DDoS trend that appears to be fueled by an
increasing number of targets of greater value in previously
underrepresented geographic locations. In addition, geographical
sources of malicious traffic have shifted. The United States and China continued as the lead source countries
for DDoS traffic, but instead of the Brazil, Russia, India
and China (BRIC) block that
dominated in Q3 2014, Q4 DDoS attack traffic came in large part
from the United States,
China and Western Europe.
Highlights from the Akamai PLXsert Q4 2014 State of the
Internet - Security Report
Compared to Q4 2013
- 57 percent more DDoS attacks
- 52 percent increase in average peak bandwidth
- 77 percent decrease in average peak packets per second
- 51 percent more application layer attacks
- 58 percent more infrastructure layer attacks
- 28 percent increase in average attack duration
- 84 percent more multi-vector attacks
- 200 percent increase in 100+ Gbps attacks (9 vs. 3)
Compared to Q3 2014
- 90 percent more DDoS attacks
- 54 percent decrease in average peak attack bandwidth
- 83 percent decrease in average peak packets per second
- 16 percent more application layer attacks
- 121 percent more infrastructure layer attacks
- 31 percent increase in average attack duration
- 38 percent more multi-vector attacks
- 47 percent fewer 100+ Gbps attacks (9 vs. 17)
A look into botnets
Malware is often used for DDoS
botnet expansion. Malware trends – multiplatform, operating system
awareness, and destructive malware – are described in the Security
Report. In addition, Akamai profiled multiple web application
attack botnets using a new analysis technique that takes advantage
of data gleaned from the Akamai Intelligent Platform™. The
identified botnets were set up to automate the discovery of web
application vulnerabilities for Remote File Inclusion (RFI) and
Operating System (OS) Command Injection attacks. Akamai researchers
profiled the botnets by identifying malicious code resource URLs
and payloads that were identical among seemingly unrelated attacks.
An attack payload was used to aggregate data and map botnet
activity, actors and victim web applications. This profiling
technique can help identify more attack sources.
Mitigation of bots, scrapers and spiders
While denial
of service attacks impacts site performance significantly, web
crawlers can also affect site performance to a lesser degree. The
most poorly coded crawlers may even resemble DDoS traffic. Akamai
classifies web crawlers based on desirability and impact on site
performance. The Security Report provides advice on classifying and
mitigating their effects.
Download the report
A complimentary copy of
the Akamai PLXsert Q4 2014 State of the Internet - Security
Report is available as a free PDF download at
www.stateoftheinternet.com/security-report.
About stateoftheinternet.com
Akamai's
stateoftheinternet.com shares 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. Visitors to 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 help put context
around the ever changing Internet landscape.
About Akamai
Akamai® is the leading provider of cloud
services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and
business applications. At the core of the Company's solutions is
the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled
with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise.
Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly
mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling
enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how
Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected
world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow
@Akamai on Twitter.
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.