Businesses Worldwide Witness 93% Increase In HTTP DDoS Attacks: Report

A report on Monday revealed that global HTTP DDoS attacks increased by 93 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and 51 per cent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). The Gaming and Gambling industry was identified as one of the most targeted sectors for these attacks in Asia.

The report revealed that during the first quarter of 2024, North America encountered the highest number of HTTP DDoS attacks in the Marketing and Advertising sector. On the other hand, Africa and Europe witnessed the greatest impact on the Information Technology and Internet industry. In the Middle East, the Computer Software industry faced frequent disruptions caused by these attacks.

In South America, it was the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry. Lastly, in Oceania, was the Telecommunications industry, the report added.

An HTTP distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is responsible for a server, website, or web application to slow down or crash due to an overwhelmingly large number of HTTP GET or POST requests.

The report highlighted that Network-layer DDoS attacks, known to target layer 3 (L3) in the OSI model, were increased by 28 per cent YoY and 5 per cent QoQ.

Comparing the combined number of HTTP DDoS attacks and L3/4 DDoS attacks, the report underlined that, overall, in the first quarter of 2024, the count increased by 50 per cent YoY and 18 per cent QoQ.

Additionally, it identified that DNS-based DDoS attacks have become the most prominent attack vector and its share among all network-layer attacks continues to grow. In the first quarter of 2024, the share of DNS-based DDoS attacks increased by 80 per cent YoY, growing to approximately 54 per cent.

Further, the study disclosed about 89 of the attacks peaked above 100 million rps and reported the largest hit 201 million rps.

On the HTTP front, the report showcased that law and legal services were the most attacked industry, as over 40 per cent of their traffic was HTTP DDoS attack traffic. While the biotechnology industry stood at the second position with a 20 per cent share.

In third place, the study recognised nonprofit organisations by 13 per cent, following which Aviation and Aerospace stood fourth.

Other sectors that were enlisted in the 10 top attack list included transportation, wholesale, government relations, motion pictures and film, public policy and adult entertainment.