"HTTP/S DDoS Attacks Soar 487% in Three Years"

Security researchers at Netscout discovered that the volume of application-layer distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks targeting HTTP and HTTPS websites grew by triple digits between 2019 and 2022, thanks to groups like Killnet.  The biggest surge in attacks on websites since 2019 came in the second half of 2022, thanks to the activity of pro-Russia groups.  The researchers claimed that the US national security sector experienced a massive 16,815% increase in attacks from Killnet hacktivists, including a spike after President Biden’s public remarks at the G7 Summit and another the same day following both French and US presidents re-affirming their support for Ukraine.  The researchers stated that a notable 18% increase in direct-path attacks over the past three years, was corresponding to a drop in reflection/amplification attacks of about the same percentage.  As the name suggests, direct-path attacks target individual organizations directly, whereas reflection/amplification spoofs a target’s IP address and sends an information request to a UDP/TCP server.  Bad bots were a key driver in direct-path attacks.  Netscout tracked over 1.35 million bots from malware families like Mirai, Meris, and Dvinis in 2022, with enterprises receiving over 350,000 security-related alerts with botnet involvement.

Infosecurity reports: "HTTP/S DDoS Attacks Soar 487% in Three Years"