Akamai Reports DDoS Attacks Hit New Heights in 2016 Third Quarter

Akamai’s third quarter State of the Internet Security report details the unrelenting increase in the scale of DDoS and web application attacks.

There were 19 DDoS attacks in the third quarter that were 100 Gbps or more of traffic, with six of those coming in at 200 or more. According to Akamai, the largest attack it observed peaked at 623 Gbps on Sept. 20.

The top DDoS attack of 623 Gbps was directed against security blogger Brian Krebs. Akamai had been providing pro-bono DDoS protection to Krebs since 2012 and has faced multiple attacks over the past four years.

DDoS attacks are rarely an isolated affair, with Akamai reporting that in the third quarter, on average there were 30 DDoS attacks per target. Some organizations however experienced more than the average, with one organization protected by Akamai being impacted by 427 DDoS attacks in the third quarter.

While DDoS attacks can come from anywhere in the world, China has been the top source country for DDoS attacks since the fourth quarter of 2015. In the third quarter of 2016, 29.56 percent of DDoS attacks originated from within China.

A primary way that DDoS attacks are able to amplify attack bandwidth is by way of reflection attacks that abuse improperly configured internet services. In the third quarter of 2016, reflection based attacks accounted for 51 percent of all DDoS attacks.

SQL Injection (SQLi) attacks, which were first publicly discussed in 1998, remain a top concern in 2016. According to Akamai, SQLI attacks account for 48.83 percent of web application attacks in the third quarter of 2016.

When it comes to web application attack targets, the U.S is number one at 66 percent. No other nation comes close to the U.S for being a web application attack target. The number two spot is a tie between Germany and Brazil at only 5 percent.