Education Mgmt Sector Saw Highest Percentage Of Network-layer DDoS Attacks In Q4 CY22

A latest report revealed the Education Management industry saw the highest percentage of network-layer DDoS attack traffic in Q4 CY2022.

According to the report, 92 per cent of all traffic routed to the industry was network-layer DDoS attack traffic.

The Information Technology and Services alongside the Public Relations and Communications industries also saw a significant amount of network-layer DDoS attack traffic (about 73 per cent). These were the industries that saw second and third-most DDoS attack traffic in Q4 CY2022.

Courtesy: Cloudflare

With a high margin, the Finance, Gaming / Gambling, and Medical Practice industries came in next with approximately a third of their traffic flagged as attack traffic, the Cloudflare report mentioned.

The report said that top targeted industries for DDoS attacks at the application-layer were Aviation/Aerospace and Events Services, during the 2022 holiday season. Network-layer DDoS attacks targeted Gaming/Gambling, Finance, and Education Management companies.  

“We also saw a shift in the top emerging threats, with Memcashed-based DDoS attacks continuing to increase in prevalence,” report said.

In Q4, Memcached-based DDoS attacks saw the highest growth — a 1,338 per cent increase quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). Memcached is a database caching system for speeding up websites and networks.

In terms of countries, 93 per cent of traffic to Chinese Internet properties behind Cloudflare was network-layer DDoS attack traffic. Meanwhile in second place, Lithuanian Internet properties behind Cloudflare saw 87 per cent of their traffic belonging to network-layer DDoS attack traffic. Following these countries were Finland, Singapore, and Taiwan with the highest percentage of attack traffic.