Ransom-related DDoS attacks now became a big threat to the cybersecurity of individuals and firms, even in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is a DDoS attack?
According to Kaspersky, a DDoS or Distributed-Denial-of-Service attack is an attack of an individual or an organization on a network resource, like in the case of the firm's website. The attackers will persist to launch requests to their target web environment until a particular website can no longer contain the sent requests. This will further render the website useless when it will no longer be opened or when it has been hacked.
Ransom-related DDoS attacks became rampant
In the midst of the COVID-10 pandemic, new evidence that arose tells that the ransom-related DDoS attacks now boomed. Neustar, a US-based technology and information company reported that ransom-related DDoS attacks went high at 154 % last year. Usually, the cyber-attacks have the main objective of cyber extortion through sending threats to a person or a company.
If in case the company does not comply with the agreement with the attackers, chances are cyber hacking and other forms of malicious cyber harms can take place. This often happens when the victim does not give the payment to the culprits.
Ransom-related DDoS attacks have a greater tendency to pull off due to their convenient access and ease of use. Traditional ransomware will only take a lot of time before being launched by the exploiters. The older form of the cyber attack can take a toll on the attacker since files should be tightly safeguarded for security, and a lot of skills should be required for its perfect execution.
Now, the modern ransom-related DDoS attacks paved a harder way to be tracked, and even the country's cybersecurity departments cannot easily chase the attackers.
In a report by Tech Radar, Neustar Vice President of Security Product Management Michael Kaczmarek said that the companies should not resort to giving the ransom payments to the attackers. Kaczmarek added that the first thing that they should do is to file a report to the nearest information office to trace and recognize the cyber attackers.
Kaczmarek continued that a firm could strategize with the concerned cybersecurity team to avoid further DDoS attacks. In this regard, they can be taught how to weigh the possible solutions, evaluate the risks, and set up several countermeasures that are in line with their security plan.
Neustar also noted that the Domain Main System (DNS) has also been receiving a surge of cyber attacks. Three organizations out of five said that their DNS has been attacked over the past year. This is alarming in a myriad of organizations since the sensitive files are always at stake during the process.
For the companies to steer away from the cyber horrors, installation of the DDoS protection hardware can help a lot during the attacks, Corero reported. The said hardware not only can trace the DDoS attack but also can jam the tiniest remains of the attacks. To make it possible, the cybersecurity division should be more aggressive in tightening its cybersecurity across all networks.
This article is owned by Tech Times.
Written by Joen Coronel
