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A new report warns that as more cybercriminals learn the potential of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, the popularity of such tactics will grow exponentially.
SonicWall research claims that the number of DDoS attacks has increased by 90% in just 12 months, with companies in the telecommunications sector bearing the brunt, suffering almost half (43.2%) of all incidents and also a sevenfold increase over from Q3 2021.
SonicWall speculates Covid-19 is to blame, as the pandemic drove most people into remote work environments, meaning businesses have relied on telecom services like never before to power critical business processes. Cyber criminals are well aware of this and want to hit the businesses where it hurts the most as they launch ransomware attacks, data theft, identity theft, corporate email attacks and other forms of malicious activity.
Entertainment attacks decrease as people leave their homes
Entertainment was the second most attacked industry, accounting for more than a fifth (21.8%) of all attacks. It has grown the most – 18 times – compared to the third quarter of 2021. Still, the proportion of attacks against this industry is slowly declining, says SonicWall, attributing this to declining consumption of online content (opens in new tab)following the easing of lockdowns around the world.
With 16.3% of all attacks, fintech takes third place. The number of attacks here has increased ninefold in the past 12 months, with politically motivated threat actors chasing Russian financial firms as the most common occurrence. This can, of course, be attributed to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Of all the attacks SonicWall analyzed, nearly three quarters (73%) were performed at the application layer, while 19% packet floods targeted the network and transport layers of the OIS model.
“We have seen an unusually high number of attacks by politically motivated actors, which have targeted the telecom sector and reduced the share of incidents in the entertainment industry,” said Ramil Khantimirov, CEO and co-founder of StormWall. “Most of the attacks took place in the first two months of the quarter, suggesting a period of calm, but it will be temporary. Hacktivists are unlikely to stop and they also developed DDoS tools that are now in the hands of all actors. We have to brace ourselves for a difficult 4th quarter.”