Cybersecurity firm Neustar has released its latest cyberthreats and trends report which identifies significant shifts in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack patterns in the first half of 2020.
The number of DDoS attacks rose by 151 percent in the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year.
These included the largest and longest attacks that Neustar has ever mitigated at 1.17 Terabits-per-second (Tbps) and 5 days and 18 hours respectively.
Neustar saw the total number of attacks increase by over two and a half times during January through June of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
The increase was felt across all size categories, with the biggest growth happening at opposite ends of the scale – the number of attacks sized 100 Gbps and above grew a whopping 275% and the number of very small attacks, sized 5 Gbps and below, increased by more than 200%.
Overall, small attacks sized 5 Gbps and below represented 70% of all attacks mitigated by Neustar between January and June of 2020.
“While large volumetric attacks capture attention and headlines, bad actors increasingly recognize the value of striking at low enough volume to bypass the traffic thresholds that would trigger mitigation to degrade performance or precision target vulnerable infrastructure like a VPN,” said Michael Kaczmarek, Neustar Vice President of Security Products.
“These shifts put every organization with an internet presence at risk of a DDoS attack – a threat that is particularly critical with global workforces reliant on VPNs for remote login. VPN servers are often left vulnerable, making it simple for cybercriminals to take an entire workforce offline with a targeted DDoS attack.”
Neustar also found cybercriminals are also using new amplification methods and attacks of higher intensity as they target critical web infrastructure.