Largest DDoS Attacks Zero In on Financial Services Customers

by Sean Michael Kerner

While many industries are targets for DDoS attacks, during the first quarter of 2014, VeriSign mitigated more attacks against media and entertainment vendors than any other industry vertical.

In the first quarter of 2014, VeriSign reported that the frequency of attacks against its clients in the finance industry declined by 34 percent year over year. In contrast, there was a 33 percent increase in attack frequency year-over-year for all other industries combined.

The average DDoS attack size in the first quarter of 2014 was 3.92G bps, which is a 6 percent increase over the first quarter of 2013.

VeriSign reported that its financial services customers were targeted with DDoS attacks that peaked at 160G bps.

VeriSign found that 30 percent of DDoS attacks during the first quarter took specific aim at Web applications.

In an amplification attack, the volume of the attack is magnified by leveraging vulnerable Internet services to increase the number of attacking addresses and the total bandwidth. In the first quarter of 2014, VeriSign saw DDoS amplification attacks that abused Network Time Protocol (NTP) and DNS.

To date, amplification attacks have leveraged NTP and DNS. Looking forward, VeriSign expects attacks to leverage SNMP and IKE, among other UDP protocols to launch new forms of DDoS amplification attacks.