DDoS attacks become more crippling in Q1

Prolexic's Quarterly Global DDoS Attack Report reveals 718 per cent increase in attack bandwidth

DDoS attacks became even more aggressive in Q1 201,3 with the average attack bandwidth growing 718 per cent in the period.

This is according to DDoS expert Prolexic Technologies, which revealed the average attack bandwidth totalled 48.24 Gbps in Q1 2013, with the average packet-per-second rate reaching 32.4 million.

The average attack duration also increase 7.14 per cent from 32.2 hours to 34.5 hours and the overall number of DDoS attacks increased 1.75 per cent.

Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic, said: “Average packet-per-second rate and average bit rate spiked in the first quarter, and both are growing at a fast clip. When you have average – not peak – rates in excess of 45Gbps and 30 million packets per second, even the largest enterprises, carriers and quite frankly most mitigation providers are going to face significant challenges.”

According to the firm, a different type of DDoS attacker emerged last year – one with considerable botnet resources, but also an understanding of how the internet routing topology works.

Scholly added: “It’s a classic change-up. Nearly everyone has been focused on bandwidth and gigabits per second, but it’s the packet rate that is causing the most damage and presenting the biggest challenge. These packet rates are above the thresholds of all but the most expensive routers and line cards and we are seeing networks buckle as a result.”