Average DDoS Attack Increasing in Magnitude Warns Arbor Networks

The size of the average distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack has increased to a worrying magnitude, according to Arbor Networks. Specialising in suites and services to protect businesses and website owners from DDoS attacks, Arbor is well placed to monitor and catalogue the latest malicious website takedowns, and the company warns that even ordinary DDoS attacks are increasing in terms of bits and packets per second.

The largest attack launched in the second quarter of 2015 was a second user datagram protocol (UDP) of 196Gbps, but even small-scale attacks during the same period (around 21%) peaked at 1Gbps, while the biggest growth was observed in the 2Gbps to 10Gbps range.

“Extremely large attacks grab the headlines, but it is the increasing size of the average DDoS attack that is causing headaches for enterprise around the world,” Darren Anstee, Chief Security Technologist at Arbor Networks, said.

“Companies need to clearly define their business risk when it comes to DDoS. With average attacks capable of congesting the internet connectivity of many businesses, it is essential that the risks and costs of an attack are understood and appropriate plans, services and solutions put in place,” Anstee added.

Arbor did, however, see a significant drop in simple service discovery protocol (SSDP) reflection amplification DDoS attacks, which were at 126,000 during the first quarter, but are down to around 84,000 in the second quarter.

Thank you Computer Weekly for providing us with this information.