100 Gbps-Plus DDoS Attacks Increased 140% in Q4, Akamai Reports

“Mega” distributed denial-of-service attacks increased 140 percent year-over-year in Q4, Akamai said Tuesday in a report. Akamai said it considers any DDoS attack larger than 100 Gbps to be a “mega” attack. Twelve such attacks took place in Q4, it said. The largest DDoS attack during Q4, from non-IoT botnet Spike, peaked at 517 Gbps, Akamai said. Seven of the 12 mega attacks are “directly attributed” to the Mirai botnet, which caused the October DDoS attacks against Dyn, Akamai said. The number of IP addresses associated with DDoS attacks also grew during Q4 even though the overall number of DDoS attacks dropped, the company said. The U.S. was the source of the most IP addresses associated with DDoS attacks during the quarter, and remained the top source country for web app attacks, Akamai said. “As we saw with the Mirai botnet attacks during the third quarter, unsecured [IoT] devices continued to drive significant DDoS attack traffic,” said Senior Security Advocate Martin McKeay in a news release. “With the predicted exponential proliferation of these devices, threat agents will have an expanding pool of resources to carry out attacks, validating the need for companies to increase their security investments. Additional emerging system vulnerabilities are expected before devices become more secure.”