Ideologically-motivated ‘hacktivism’ has become a leading motivation for DDoS attacks and when coupled with the readily-available DDoS attack toolkits, it is clear that the security landscape has evolved to a whole new level, according to a newly released " 7th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report: from Arbor Networks.
The rise of hacktivism will lead network operators to update their risk assessment models. The report, which reflects input from 114 service providers throughout the world, provides a view from the front lines of a global battle against botnets and DDoS attacks.
“What we saw in 2011 was the democratization of DDoS,�? said Roland Dobbins, Arbor Networks Solutions Architect for Asia-Pacific, and the primary author of this year’s report. “Any enterprise operating online - which means just about any type and size of organization - can become a target, because of who they are, what they sell, who they partner with or for any other real or perceived affiliations. Furthermore, the explosion of inexpensive and readily-accessible attack tools is enabling anyone to carry out DDoS attacks.
Some highlights:
Over the past year, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of high-bandwidth DDoS attacks in the 10 Gbps range.
Twenty-five percent observed DDoS attacks that exceeded the total bandwidth into their data center.
The single largest reported DDoS attack during the survey period was 60 Gbps, down from 100 Gbps reported in 2010.
Sophisticated application-layer DDoS attacks have become commonplace and complex multi-vector DDoS attacks with both high-bandwidth and application-layer attack components are rapidly gaining in popularity with attackers.
The first IPv6 DDoS attacks have been reported, although they remain rare.
http://www.arbornetworks.com/report
- In January, Alcatel-Lucent announced plans to integrate Arbor Networks' Threat Management System into its 7750 IP Service Router to provide advanced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection in carrier clouds. The capabilities will be delivered either as a standalone appliance or running on an MS-ISA blade for the 7750 Service Router. The solution delivers 60 Gbps+ performance per chassis.
