Arbor Networks: Largest DDoS Attack Hits 579 Gbps

The largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack data during the first six months of 2016, as measured by Arbor Networks, reached 579 Gbps -- up 75% over the largest DDoS attack seen by the same research in 2015.  The data from the Arbor study shows a continuing escalation in both the size and frequency of attacks.

Arbor’s data is gathered through the Active Threat Level Analysis System (ATLAS), a collaborative partnership with more than 330 service provider customers who share anonymous traffic data with Arbor in order to deliver a comprehensive, aggregated view of global traffic and threats.

ATLAS has recorded:

An average of 124,000 events per week over the last 18 months.
A 73% increase in peak attack size over 2015, to 579Gbps.
274 attacks over 100Gbps monitored in 1H 2016, versus 223 in all of 2015.
46 attacks over 200Gbps monitored in 1H 2016, versus 16 in all of 2015.
USA, France and Great Britain are the top targets for attacks over 10Gbps.

Here are some highlights released by the company:

LizardStresser, an IoT botnet was used to launch attacks as large as 400Gbps targeting gaming sites worldwide, Brazilian financial institutions, Internet service providers (ISPs) and government institutions.
Average attack size in 1H 2016 was 986Mbps, a 30% increase over 2015.
Average attack size is projected to be 1.15Gbps by end of 2016.
DNS is the most prevalent protocol used in 2016, taking over from NTP and SSDP in 2015.
Average size of DNS reflection amplification attacks is growing strongly.
Peak monitored reflection amplification attack size in 1H 2016 was 480Gbps (DNS).

https://www.arbornetworks.com/arbor-networks-releases-global-ddos-attack-data-for-1h-2016