THE GROWING DDOS LANDSCAPE

Last month, news reports highlighted one of the biggest DDoS attacks ever recorded. The attack, which targeted a large European bank, generated 809m packets per second (Mpps). This is a new industry record for a PPS-focused attack which is more than double the size of previous attacks.

- Sanjai Gangadharan

A10 Networks recently launched its Q2 2020: State of DDoS Weapons Report, based on approximately 10 million unique source addresses tracked by A10 Networks, and the report sheds more light on the loud, distributed nature of DDoS attacks and the key trends and observations that enterprises can learn from when adopting a successful defence.

DDoS Botnet Agents

We’ve previously written about how IoT devices and DDoS attacks are a perfect match. IoT devices such as smartwatches, routers and cameras are now commonly infected by malware and under the control of malicious actors who use them to launch flexible DDoS attacks. Our researchers accumulated knowledge of repeatedly used hosts in these attacks, scanning for those that show malware-infected characteristics that deserve to be treated with caution whilst under a DDoS attack.

The report highlighted the top three countries hosting DDoS botnet agents as follows:

• China 15%

• Vietnam 12%

• Taiwan 9%

From the countries above, the top ASNs hosting

DDoS botnet agents were:

• Chungwha Telecoms (Taiwan)

• China Telecom

• China Unicom CN

• VNPT Corp (Vietnam)

Malware Proliferation