Dur­ing the 3^rd quar­ter of 2015, Dis­trib­uted Denial of Ser­vice (DDoS) attacks reached a new fig­ure with a 180% increase com­pared to 3^rd quar­ter of 2014, and 23% increase com­pared to 2015 2^nd quarter.

Akaimai says, “Aver­age peak of DDoS attacks’ vol­ume, band­width and dura­tion decreased despite the new record of attacks.” The study per­formed by Aka­mai found that the UK was the top coun­try source of such attacks for the 3^rd quar­ter, being at the top was due to the fact that other coun­tries had fewer con­firmed attacks. In 2015 2^nd quar­ter, China was the num­ber one source coun­try for DDoS attacks with over 37%.

Accord­ing to the study, online gam­ing is the num­ber one tar­get for such attacks since the 2^nd quar­ter of 2014 and warned online gam­ing com­pa­nies that they could be top tar­gets again in the 3^rd quar­ter of 2015. The study also says that, “A cou­ple of the large con­sole gam­ing net­works were attacked exten­sively in Decem­ber 2014 when online play­ers were likely to be affected dur­ing the launch of new net­worked games in the hol­i­day sea­son” the study also states, “We will expe­ri­ence a sim­i­lar pat­tern again at the end of 2015”.

Aka­mai pre­dicts that DDoS will remain a pop­u­lar choice for attack­ers by stat­ing, “Next months will see a new record of DDoS attacks on Akamai’s net­work while attack meth­ods will vary with time”. Aka­mai added, “The gam­ing indus­try will con­tinue to receive heavy attacks since secu­rity vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in this indus­try will con­tinue to attract attack­ers”. The report also added, “Finan­cial ser­vices will con­tinue to be a top tar­get for attack­ers to extract sen­si­tive data.”

On Novem­ber 2015, Aus­tralian and New Zealand finan­cial insti­tu­tions were the first vic­tims to fall to DDoS attacks. Kasper­sky claims that a cyber­crim­i­nal group called DD4BC, which stands for “DDoS for Bit­coin”, is behind the DDoS attacks that tar­geted banks, media groups and gam­ing com­pa­nies, the group also threat­ened to tar­get cus­tomers’ web­sites unless a pay­off is given.

Kasper­sky also found that 66.6% of inter­net users showed wor­ries about the finan­cial fraud hap­pen­ing online, yet 11% of users do not use any secu­rity solu­tions to pro­tect them­selves, the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of online pay­ment is forc­ing more con­sumers to aban­don such ser­vice. The global head of fraud pre­ven­tion at Kasper­sky Lab, Ross Hogan, said, “Cyber attack­ers are always for the look­out for per­sonal finan­cial infor­ma­tion, their goal is to make use of user details or sell them to gain profit, that’s why users are increas­ingly wor­ried about the dan­ger of online fraud.” He added, “Finan­cial insti­tu­tions such as banks need to apply solid secu­rity solu­tions in order for their cus­tomers to feel safe and con­fi­dent when bank­ing online. Mean­while, cus­tomers shouldn’t let their fears get in the way of enjoy­ing the con­ve­nience of online bank­ing services.”

Hav­ing 66.6% of inter­net users show­ing con­cerns about online fraud, Kasper­sky found pre­vi­ously that 14.2% of users lack secu­rity aware­ness by using one pass­word for all online accounts. The prin­ci­pal secu­rity researcher of Kasper­sky Lab, David Emm, said, “It is unfor­tu­nate to see many peo­ple with lit­tle under­stand­ing about inter­net threats and lack of seri­ous­ness in safe­guard­ing their sen­si­tive data, this gap will of course increase the risk of los­ing their sen­si­tive data.” He added, “It is advised to use dif­fer­ent strong pass­words for online accounts in order to pro­tect dig­i­tal iden­tity, apply­ing an algo­rithm to cre­ate strong pass­words can con­tribute in pro­tect­ing online accounts from being hacked.”

For more tips about online secu­rity best prac­tices, con­tact our IT Secu­rity Team to get all the help needed in order to stay pro­tected from harm­ful DDoS attacks and cyber criminals.