The size of cyber attacks that aim to overwhelm websites with massive amounts of traffic exploded in the first quarter, with the bandwidth of an average attack skyrocketing 691%, a new report released on Wednesday reveals.
The quarterly data on distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks underscores the increased challenges facing companies like banks, media outlets and retailers that rely on their website staying online.
According to DDoS protection services provider Prolexic Technologies, the average attack bandwidth surged to 48.25 gigabytes per second in the first quarter, representing a 691% increase from the year before and a 718% rise from the fourth quarter of 2012.
“Never before have attacks been this formidable,” Prolexic said in the report.
Moreover, Prolexic said more than 10% of attacks against its client base averaged more than 60 gigabytes per second. One attack, against an unnamed enterprise customer in March, peaked at 130 gigabytes per second.
Attacks are also growing in duration, jumping an average of 21% year-over-year to 34.5 hours, the report said.
Likewise, DDoS attacks are happening more frequently, climbing 21.75% from the first quarter of 2012. March alone accounted for 44% of the first quarter’s attacks, Prolexic said.
“When you have average — not peak — rates in excess of 45 Gbps and 30 million packets-per-second, even the largest enterprises, carriers, and quite frankly most mitigation providers, are going to face significant challenges,” Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic, said in a statement.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/04/17/intensity-ddos-attacks-explode-in-first-quarter-average-bandwith-surges-61/
