Global DDoS Attack Report

Download the report: "Quarterly Global Attack Report Q4 2013"

The fourth quarter of 2013 was not filled with stories of digital warfare or extreme cases of rampant hacktivism. Instead it was best exemplified by groups of script kiddies graduating into digital crime.

A typical instance of Q4 2013 cybercrime was hackers assembling very simple DDoS-for-hire sites that could run from an iPad. These sites democratize DDoS attacks with slick user interfaces and convenient payment methods, opening up the market to malicious actors who can easily inflict damage on small to medium businesses for as little as $5 USD.

Prevention of fraud and other malicious activity requires action from the cybersecurity community, such as cleanup efforts for CHARGEN and other obsolete protocols, making it more difficult for criminals offering DDoS-for-hire.

DDoS trends include the following:

1. Q4 2013 set a record for the number of attacks, demonstrating a consistently heightened level of global DDoS attack activity
2. Reflection attacks increased 70 percent from Q2 to Q4, and more than 265 percent from Q4 2012
3. Distributed reflection denial of service (DrDoS) attacks are increasingly popular because they are easily obscured
4. More than 62 percent of Q4 2013 DDoS attacks originated in China