As Internet Gets Faster, Volume of DDoS Attacks Grows, Akamai Reports

Broadband speeds aren’t the only thing on the rise. The volume of security risks are also increasing. Here are key findings in Akamai’s 3Q15 State of the Internet report.

During the third quarter, the largest attack that Akamai observed was a 149G-bps attack on July 17 against a customer in the gaming industry. That attack was far less than the top DDoS attack in the second quarter, which was reported at 250G bps.

The United Kingdom (at 26 percent) was the source of DDoS attacks in the third quarter, followed by China in second place at 21 percent.

While the UK was the top source for DDoS attacks, when it comes to Web application attacks, the U.S. was tops at 59 percent of all attacks seen in the third quarter.

DDoS attackers have made increasing use of reflection techniques to boost the impact of attacks. In a DDoS reflection attack, a vulnerable service is abused by reflecting an attack and amplifying the attack’s volume.

During the third quarter, Akamai reported that only 12 percent of attacks came in over the encrypted HTTPS transport method, while 88 percent used HTTP.

While attackers used Web application attacks against multiple industries, retail was the top target in the third quarter.

Globally, the average connection speed hit 5.1M bps in the third quarter of 2015 for a 14 percent year-over-year gain. South Korea was the fastest country at 20.5M bps, while the U.S. ranked 16th with an average connection speed of 12.6M bps.