DDoS Attack Trends in 2021

Posted by NTSPL on December 20th, 2021

Whenever there is an increased use of the internet, we will most likely witness more cyber-crime cases. For example, the latest DDoS attacks have increased since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. There has been a massive change in the pattern of internet usage, especially with the work from home scenario gaining more popularity due to the lockdown.

As a result, cybercriminals now have more frequent opportunities to carry out unethical activities. Despite the gradual end of the lockdown, internet activities such as the increasing trend of cloud migration and excessive usage of IoT devices are most likely to affect the cyber-security and DDoS attack trends of 2021.

In this article, we will check out the latest DDoS attack trends and how we can restrict the rise of those.

What is the meaning of DDoS attacks?

The full form of DDoS is Distributed Denial of Service, and the attacks, in this case, are initiated to destroy offline applications or networks, websites, and more. Cybercriminals carry out the latest DDoS attacks by crowding websites with traffic from a range of unethical and harmful sources. Botnet armies are accumulated by infecting all devices with malware. As a result, cyber attackers can easily control the widgets remotely without the owners knowing the situation. Therefore, the attackers can crowd the targeted website with excessive traffic using various techniques beyond the understanding of common people.

What are the types of DDoS attacks that occur commonly?

Before moving ahead with the DDoS attack trends, let us know a little about the common types of attacks. According to the Digital Attack Map of Google that constantly tracks DDoS attacks across the world, almost a third of the total downtime issues occurring are caused due to the same. According to Google Digital Attack Map, these incidents can be divided into four distinct categories. Here is a list:

• Application attacks or the ones that are targeted towards a specific element of a service or application. This type of attack is possible despite very few devices attacking amidst a considerably low traffic rate.
• Fragmentation attacks are where target servers are saturated using small data packets that are difficult to reassemble.
• Volumetric attacks occur when every bit of bandwidth between the broader internet and target is consumed due to the attack.
• TCP Connection attacks are the latest DDoS attacks marked by state-exhaustion, where the TCP handshake process is exploited. As a result, there are a large number of requests sent by fake IPs. The target has to wait for the final handshake step, which ultimately does not occur. As a result, the target is left with absolutely zero resources.

What are the common DDoS attack trends of 2021?

Here is a list of the latest DDoS attack trends that you were waiting to check out:

Increase in frequency and size

During the summer of 2020, there were reports of two high-level DDoS attacks of unprecedented sizes. The incident involved two of the biggest market players, Amazon and Google. As a result, there was a lot of discussion regarding the renewal of DDoS risk monitoring. According to the reports of BBC, the attack on Amazon occurred in June 2020, which had a peak size of was 2.3Tbps. The size of this attack surpasses the previous one that created a record at 1.7Tbps in 2018. Soon, Google declared that the attack involving their company was larger, with a peak size of 2.5Tbps.

The frequency of DDoS attacks is becoming more frequent despite several organisations\' increased usage of DDoS attack prevention tools. According to Businesswire reports, there were 2.5 times more attacks during the initial phase of 2020 than during the same time in 2019. The trend was common in the case of both large and small businesses. In fact, for the latter that experiences more frequent smaller attacks, it is often very difficult to even detect the same. It is because these attacks don\'t pass the traffic criteria resulting in the triggering of mitigation efforts.

Latest DDoS attacks on APIs

On the one hand, cloud migration is constantly prompting more companies to accept cloud-native architecture. The usage of micro-services and APIs result in a more exposed attack surface. There is an increase in attack vectors, which means cybercriminals can exploit more. Without a proper website monitoring tool, it won’t be possible to protect sensitive data and API’s that are otherwise exposed to cyberattacks. Moreover, Radware, a bot migration leader, reported that over 50% of organizations experience DDoS attacks every month.

New attack weapons and complex attacks

Like other attack methods and mitigation tools, every DDoS attack prevention tool is gradually becoming more sophisticated. In an article by Businesswire published in September 2020, security reports state that cybercriminals constantly carry out DDoS attacks on different entry points. The same article said that over 52% of threats that Neustar neutralized utilized a minimum of three vectors. Moreover, The number of attacks with a single vector is almost non-existent.

DDoS attacks involving ransom

One of the most common DDoS attack trends is the increase of ransom-based problems. In this type of attack, the target will constantly receive spam emails demanding ransom amounts. Threats have also involved stating the damage or disruption of the target\'s business or services lest the ransom amount is paid properly. Moreover, the target may also experience small attacks as teasers.

Takeaway

To protect from DDoS attacks, every business must utilize a proper DDoS attack prevention tool, amongst other strategies. With an increase in the number of cases, it has become more important to be aware of every email that is received and the frequency of downtime. Cyber attackers apply techniques that are way too advanced, and we must always be conscious of even the slightest of changes to restrict problems.

NTSPL multilayer DDoS Protection keeps your network infrastructure and services safe, even while an attacker is targeting them. Find out if there are any deviations from the machine-learned standard for inbound IP traffic. NTSPL’s DDoS attack protection service helps you discover an unusual outbound activity or malicious connections from IoT devices on your network and take appropriate action.