Imperva published its “2021 Global DDoS Threat Landscape Report,” noting that instances of distributed denial-of-service attacks grew “four-fold,” with volume (2X) and packets (3X) likewise increasing since 2020.
Of note, Imperva noted that it mitigated its “largest” DDoS attack to date, a 1.02Tbps throughput attack running 155 million packets-per-second. This amount is up from 936Gbps in September 2020.
“Although those attacks took place outside the scope of this report (the first half of 2021),” the company noted, “they serve to underline a clear trend towards shorter, higher volume attacks, where the average attack duration is just six minutes.”
Highlights of the report included:
- Declining attack durations – which is indicative of wider multi-vector strikes – despite packet and volume increases.
- Increased ransomware instances.
- Computing and IT industry accounting for 29 percent application-layer attacks, with Financial Services representing 22 percent.
- Most DDoS attacks taking place on a Friday, with an “overall upward trend of attacks across the week.
- User Datagram Protocol (UDP) reflection/amplification representing the main protocol used by attackers.
- Significant increases in Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) attacks.
- SYN and SYN floods up Y2Y.
