In the past year the size and volume of distributed denial-of-service attacks has substantially increased, with a 389 percent jump in average attack bandwidth between the third quarter of 2013 and the third quarter of 2014.
The increase in DDoS attacks is largely because of the availability of attack toolkits and interfaces. There is also a growing DDoS-for-hire criminal industry.
"DDoS attack size and volume have gone through the roof this year," said John Summers, vice president of the security business unit at Akamai, the company that released the report.
"In the third quarter alone, Akamai mitigated 17 attacks greater than 100 gigabits-per-second, with the largest at 321 Gbps. Interestingly, we witnessed none of that size in the same quarter a year ago and only six last quarter. These mega-attacks each used multiple DDoS vectors to deliver large bandwidth-consuming packets at an extremely high rate of speed."
Akamai also reportedly defended against a total of 17 DDoS attacks that were greater than 100 gigabits-per-second. The largest was a whopping 321 Gbps.
"We've seen a remarkable increase in the number of very large attacks," continued Summers. "If you do not have a way to defend [against a 100 Gbps attack], other than at the access into your infrastructure, you're going down, there's nothing you can do."
Furthermore, the company also began seeing botnets, which is a type of bot that runs on a network to distribute malware, targeting a much wider range of devices than just computers and servers. For the first time ever, during the past quarter, the company saw botnet attacks from devices that use an ARM microprocessor, which are typically used in devices such as digital TV's, smartphones, gaming consoles and so on.
"People have built ways to crack into those devices, then install software that they ... can launch DDoS attacks from," said Summers.
A reason for this is that many neglect to update the firmware or malware protection on devices, which make those devices attractive targets for creators of botnets, or "botnet farmers."
Akamai reports that compared with the second quarter of this year the number of DDoS attacks was only up by 2 percent, although the sheer size of those attacks was, on average, up by 80 percent.
Media and online entertainment companies are the most targeted companies. Around 24 percent of attacks originated in the U.S., with 20 percent coming from China and 18 percent from Brazil.
