Massive DDoS Attacks Becoming the New Normal, Arbor Networks Finds

The latest Arbor Networks DDoS report shows a disturbing trend toward massive DDoS attacks—274 attacks of 100G bps or higher in the first half of 2016.

The peak attack reported by Arbor Networks in the first half came in at 579G bps, 73 percent higher than the 2015 peak attack of 334G bps.

Arbor’s data shows that massive DDoS attacks are becoming the new normal. In 2015, there were 16 DDoS attacks that were more than 200G bps, while in the first half of 2016 alone, there already have been 46.

The top target for DDoS attacks is Port 80, commonly used for HTTP Web traffic. In second place is Domain Name Systems (DNS), which typically use Port 53.

More than 8 in 10 (84 percent) DDoS attacks lasted 30 minutes or less in the first half of 2016.

The United States is the top target for DDoS attacks, followed by South Korea and China. When it comes to attacks of 10G bps or higher, the United States still tops the list, followed by France and the United Kingdom.

Using DNS reflection, attackers can amplify DDoS attacks by abusing misconfigured DNS services to reflect and forward requests, which generates more attack bandwidth.

Overall, Arbor has now pegged the average attack size for DDoS in the first half of 2016 to be 986M bps.