Akamai, which is a security group, released a review of the second quarter of 2015 that showed the number of Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attacks has grown for 7% in comparison with the preceding quarter. The group cautioned that the most popular online gambling operators are a common target for the criminal organisations that start the attacks.
DDoS activity more than doubled on y-o-y basis or, more precisely, jumped for 132%. This is a very disturbing number and an actual cause for concern. Approximately 35% of the attacks that took place this quarter were on remote gaming sites.
Additional worrying information is that some hacker attacks were very powerful and the number of such “mega-attacks” is on the rise as well. A total of 12 attacks witnessed more than 100 Gbps in malicious traffic in the second quarter of the year; the strongest one was over 240 Ggps and was sustained for more than 13 hours.
Furthermore, the security group highlighted the trend of longer lasting less powerful attacks. Akamai pointed out that this quarter the average length of the attacks was about 20.6 hours, a number that is higher for 9% on y-o-y comparison.
The Vice President of Cloud Security Business Unit at Akamai, John Summers, said that the threat posed by DDoS and web app attacks was continuously growing. He revealed that “malicious actors” were continually changing the game by “switching tactics, seeking out new vulnerabilities” and even reintroducing old techniques that many believed were outdated. Additionally, Summers stated that by analysing the assaults they were able to identify any possible threats of the future and provide valuable information that could improve the security of gambling sites, web applications and etc.