DDoS Attackers Taking Direct Aim at Gaming Companies, Akamai Reports

In the second quarter of this year, 82 percent of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were targeted at gaming companies, according to Akamai‘s 2Q17 State of the Internet / Security report. The report, which was released on Aug. 22, provides new statistics on the DDoS and web application attack landscape. One of the most significant findings in the 27-page report is that 90 percent fewer devices were used in volumetric DDoS attacks since the first quarter of 2017. Looking at web application attacks, once again Akamai found that SQL injection tops the list as the most common attack vector. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights from the Akamai Second Quarter 2017 State of the Internet / Security Report.

Attackers continue to use different techniques in DDoS attacks, with UDP fragments being the most commonly used in second quarter at 27 percent.

According to Akamai, the number of IPs involved in volumetric DDoS attacks dropped over 90 percent since the first quarter of 2017. By geography, Egypt tops the list with DDoS attacks from 44,000 IP addresses.

While DDoS attacks impact multiple industry verticals, in the second quarter of 2017 the gaming industry was on the receiving end of 82 percent of all attacks seen by Akamai.

The average number of DDoS attacks per target grew to 32 in the second quarter, largely driven by a single gaming company that was targeted 558 times during the quarter.

Akamai reported that SQL injection (SQLi) was used in 51 percent of web application attacks in the second quarter, up from 44 percent in the first quarter.

The United States accounted for 33.8 percent of all source IPs for web application traffic in the second quarter of 2017.

The United States remained the top target of web application attack traffic, with more than 218 million attacks seen by Akamai in the second quarter of 2017.