Source:Verisign Q1 2017 DDoS Trends Report

Verisign recently released its Q1 2017 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of Verisign DDoS Protection Services.

Verisign witnessed a 23 per cent decrease in the number of attacks in Q1 2017. However, average peak attack size increased 26 per cent compared with the previous quarter. Overall, average peak attack sizes have been noticeably larger since Q1 2016, with peak sizes of over 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps).

The largest volumetric and highest intensity DDoS attack observed by Verisign in Q1 2017 was a multi-vector attack that peaked to over 120 Gbps and some 90 Million packets per second (Mpps). This attack sent a flood of traffic to the targeted network in excess of 60 Gbps for more than 15 hours. The attack was notable because the attackers were persistent, sending attack traffic on a daily basis for over two weeks. The event also included UDP floods and IP fragments, which increased the volume of the attack.

The report said 57 per cent of the DDoS attacks mitigated by Verisign in Q1 2017 employed multiple attack types. Forty-six per cent of DDoS attacks were UDP Floods. TCP-based attacks were the second most common attack vector, making up 33 percent of attack types in the quarter.

The IT/Cloud/SaaS industry, representing 58 per cent of mitigation activity, was the most frequently targeted industry for the 10th consecutive quarter. The financial sector industry experienced the second highest number of DDoS attacks, representing 28 per cent of mitigation activity, a significant increase from the 7 per cent mitigation in the previous quarter. — VNS