Trump may not have been silenced by DDoS attacks, but your business could be

When Elon Musk interviewed Donald Trump on X, the billionaire owner of the social network blamed prolonged delays in getting started on a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X,” Musk tweeted, although the rest of X seemed to be working just fine. Some X employees have, anonymously, rejected the claim outright.

I mention this because the incident has, unsurprisingly, meant the media is talking about DDoS attacks again. The truth is it should never have been ignoring them. Radware’s H1 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report reveals why: DDoS attacks are the geopolitical attacker’s weapon of choice.

“Web DDoS attacks have continued to rise since the start of 2023 due to several trends in the new threat landscape,” the report states. “A good portion of the activity, especially in Europe, can be attributed to hacktivists motivated by political tensions in the region.”

Continued to rise by how much? I trust you are sitting down. These worldwide geopolitical tensions have driven Web DDoS attacks to climb by an astonishing 265% in just six months.

Who is under DDOS attack?

The most targeted country, according to the Radware analysts, was Ukraine, while the most active threat actor was the pro-Russia ‘NoName057(16)’. That’s a long title for a group with no name, but hey. We know it collaborates with groups including the Cyber Army of Russia.

The majority of Web DDoS attacks appear to have targeted organisations within the EMEA region, with sporting events and elections proving popular catalysts.

Business organisations did not escape the attention of DDoS attackers. Far from it, in fact. When it came to network attackers against business, finance was, by far, the most popular target accounting for some 44% of the total.

The closest in terms of DDoS targeting was healthcare (17%) followed by technology (10%).

Digging into the global attack data further, organisations in the e-commerce, energy and automotive sectors saw the greatest rise compared to the same period during 2023. Research and education, telecoms, finance and gaming also showed considerable growth. Utilities, service providers and retail were “considerably less targeted” however.

Gcore report reveals scale of DDOS attacks

Another report, this time from Gcore, also reported a substantial increase in both the volume and scale of attacks across the first half of 2024.

Andrey Slastenov, Head of Security at Gcore, said “a mere 300Gbps attack will take an unprotected server offline in seconds. The payload of any attack measured in terabits is immense and any rise in attack potency, no matter how small, can have serious repercussions at these levels.”

As far as the attack volume was concerned, Slastenov is concerned about the rise.

“Industries must think about why they are being targeted so they can protect themselves,” Slastenov said. “In gaming, some attacks are carried out between competitors. Others are designed to affect the monetisation of the gaming industry, which is directly affected if a DDoS attack takes the gaming service offline.”

Can you prepare for a DDoS attack?

So, how can you protect your business against a DDOS attack? One of the problems, explained Donny Chong, Director at Nexusguard, is that the methods keep changing.

“On top of the raw power of modern DDoS, attackers are constantly evolving their methods to identify new attack vectors and overcome defences. There is no real ‘reacting’ to a DDoS attack, you need to be prepared before it happens.”

Referring to a recently confirmed DDoS attack against Microsoft Azure, Erfan Shadabi, a cybersecurity expert at comforte AG, concludes that “no entity, regardless of its size and resources, is immune to cyber threats”.

To safeguard against similar threats, organisations should focus on the following key areas, Shadabi says:

• Protect Your Data: Ensure that all sensitive and critical data is adequately protected through tokenization, encryption and access controls.
• Regular Tests: Conduct frequent security assessments and penetration tests.
• Review Security Posture: Continuously review and update security policies and defences in response to the evolving threat landscape.
• Crisis Response Planning: Develop and regularly update an incident response plan.
• Staff Training: Educate and train employees on cybersecurity best practices and the importance of vigilance to prevent and respond to cyber threats effectively.

Related articles:

• Don’t fall for these DDoS myths
• Why DDoS mitigation should be seen as non-negotiable
• Forget hacked toothbrushes, worry about real DDOS attacks