"DDoS Attacks Double With Governments Most Targeted"

A new study conducted by security researchers at StormWall found that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks continue to grow, with the number of incidents doubling year-on-year (YoY).  The researchers said that DDoS attacks globally rose by 102% in the first half of this year compared to 2023.  The government sector was the hardest hit, with a 116% YoY increase.  The researchers noted that attacks on the government sector amounted to 29% of DDoS incidents.  The researchers attribute this, in part, to the large number of countries holding elections this year.  The researchers noted that government websites were the most common targets, with DDoS traffic spiking during elections.  The next most targeted vertical industries were entertainment and financial services, making up 16% and 14% of DDoS attacks respectively.  During the study, the researchers also saw a significant increase in attacks during the Euro 2024 football (soccer) championships.  One sports streaming service faced a 650 Gbp/s attack on June 16.  The researchers said that botnets are becoming more powerful and believe the average size of a botnet increased from 5000 devices in the first half of 2023 to 20,000 in the first half of 2024.  Carpet Bombing Attacks also increased, where attackers target multiple IP addresses to bring down networks.  So did multi-vector attacks, which target multiple layers of the OSI model simultaneously. 

Infosecurity Magazine reports: "DDoS Attacks Double With Governments Most Targeted"