In 2021, Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) blocked over 20,000 DDoS attempts against businesses. Telecommunications, software & technology, and government were the three most targeted verticals.
This is most likely owing to the magnitude of disruption – as well as any possible financial benefit –- that such DDoS attacks might cause.
Lumen Technologies’ latest report on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is detailing DDoS data and trends for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021.
In Q4 2021, there was an increase in the number of unique Command and Control (C2) servers tracked for the widespread DDoS botnets Gafgyt and Mirai, showing that actors are continuing to alter their code to keep these botnets blooming.
Later in the year, voice providers became a target, according to Lumen. Hostile actors may see this early success as a chance for future DDoS attacks.
Financial gain is an important motive for attackers, and ransom DDoS attacks were used more often during the year.
This pattern is anticipated to persist until at least 2022, stated Lumen.
Reflection-style DDoS attacks are still extensively utilized, owing to the fact that they take little effort to create huge attacks.
Reflection Vectors
“Reflection vectors continue to have a significant impact on businesses worldwide,” said Mark Dehus, director of information security for Black Lotus Labs, the threat research arm of Lumen Technologies. “This trend will likely continue in the coming years. It will take an industry-wide, collaborative effort to help mitigate sources of reflection. In addition, DDoS botnets will persist, and given the recent targeting of voice services, VoIP providers should ensure their security strategies address the risk going forward. At Black Lotus Labs, we continue to do our part to track and mitigate botnets at their core. We strongly encourage business to understand and monitor their public attack surface to avoid having their resources abused and leveraged to launch attacks. We also encourage businesses to have a DDoS mitigation service in place to help minimize the impact of any future attacks.”
The full DDoS Report by Lumen Technologies can be found here. The report includes recent DDoS attack patterns as well as projections for 2022.
