{"id":226593,"date":"2017-08-31T17:58:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T15:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=226593"},"modified":"2017-08-31T18:00:40","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T16:00:40","slug":"ddos-attacks-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/226593-ddos-attacks-on-the-rise.html","title":{"rendered":"DDoS attacks on the rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Akamai has released its Q2 2017 State of the Internet Security Report, which shows that distributed denial of service (DDoS) and web application attacks are on the rise.<\/p>\n

Contributing to the rise was the PBot DDoS malware, which re-emerged as the foundation of the strongest DDoS attacks seen by Akamai in Q2.<\/p>\n

Attackers were able to create a mini-DDoS botnet capable of launching a 75Gbps DDoS attack.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the Pbot botnet was comprised of only 400 nodes, yet was able to generate a significant level of attack traffic.<\/p>\n

Domain Generation Algorithms<\/h3>\n

Another entry on the \u201ceverything old is new again\u201d list was the use of Domain Generation Algorithms (DGA) in malware Command and Control (C2) infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Introduced with the Conficker worm in 2008, DGA has remained a frequently-used communication technique for modern malware.<\/p>\n

Akamai found that infected networks generated approximately 15-times the DNS lookup rate of a clean network.<\/p>\n

This was the outcome of access to randomly-generated domains by the malware on the infected networks, as most of the generated domains were not registered and trying to access them created a lot of noise.<\/p>\n

Akamai also used its “unique visibility” in defending\u00a0against attacks from the Mirai botnet in September 2016 and onward to study different aspects of the botnet – specifically its C2 infrastructure in Q2.<\/p>\n

Akamai said Mirai, like other botnets, is now contributing to the commoditization of DDoS.<\/p>\n

While many of the botnet\u2019s C2 nodes were observed conducting \u201cdedicated attacks\u201d against IPs, more were noted as participating in \u201cpay-for-play\u201d attacks.<\/p>\n

In these situations, Mirai C2 nodes were observed attacking IPs for a short duration, going inactive, and then re-emerging to attack different targets.<\/p>\n

The Numbers<\/h3>\n