Neustar Finds Significant Increase in DDoS Attacks, Cites IoT Threat

The frequency of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack mitigations increased 40 percent so far in 2016, vs. the same period in 2015, Neustar reported Monday. IoT botnets emerged this year as a DDoS tool, as evidenced by the Mirai botnet that caused the October Dyn attacks (see 1610210056 and 1610250035), Neustar said. “The DDoS attack landscape has become increasingly complex in 2016 because there is no singular goal behind these attacks; some seek to disrupt services, while others serve as smokescreens to breach data,” said Senior Vice President Rodney Joffe in a news release. “Mirai signals a watershed moment for DDoS attacks, where the bad guys finally turned the Internet back on its users. It is imperative to invest in effective DDoS protection now because the threat landscape has fundamentally changed.” Multi-vector attacks are 322 percent higher this year than 2015, and were 52 percent of all DDoS attacks that Neustar mitigated this year, the company said. Domain name system-based attacks increased 648 percent this year as attackers increased their leveraging of DNS security extension amplification to generate “massive volumetric pressure,” Neustar said.