Gcore Unveils Alarming Rise in DDoS Attack Power in Latest Cybersecurity Report

Gcore, a company specializing in cybersecurity, recently published its regular report dedicated to trends in DDoS attacks.

The report highlights a significant surge in the power of DDoS attacks over the past three years, exceeding a 100% annual increase. For instance, in 2021, the peak attack power reached 300 Gbps, in 2022 it escalated to 650 Gbps, and in 2023 it soared to a record-breaking 1600 Gbps.

The duration of attacks ranged from three minutes to nine hours. Short-term attacks often pose detection and mitigation challenges due to insufficient data on the assailant, whereas prolonged attacks demand substantial resources for neutralization.

The majority of DDoS attacks (62%) targeted UDP streams. TCP and ICMP attacks were also prevalent, accounting for 16% and 12%, respectively. Other types of attacks, including SYN and SYN+ACK, comprised merely 10%.

The attacks originated from various countries, underscoring the global nature of cyber threats. The United States leads the list of attack source countries (24%), followed by Indonesia (17%), the Netherlands (12%), and others.

The gaming industry remains the most targeted sector (46%), followed by the financial sector (22%), telecommunications companies (18%), cloud infrastructure providers (7%), and software development companies (3%).

The escalation of attack power to 1.6 Tbps signals a new level of DDoS threat evolution. The geographic distribution of attack sources emphasizes the need for international collaboration and intelligence sharing to effectively combat this issue.

Attacks are becoming increasingly tactical and adaptable; for example, in the gaming industry, attacks often possess low power but high frequency, whereas in the financial and telecommunications sectors, attacks are typically more extensive.

Gcore’s Radar report for the second half of 2023 underscores the necessity of comprehensive and adaptive cybersecurity measures across all sectors. Experts advise companies to implement intrusion detection and prevention systems for traffic monitoring, scaling mechanisms and load balancing, DDoS protection technologies, and to regularly test their infrastructure and practice potential response plans.

Combining all these approaches will help organizations of any size effectively counter the growing DDoS threat.