Half of Q3 DDoS attacks happened in September
The rise is caused by a large number of rather simple types of attacks.
In the third quarter of 2019, the number of DDoS attacks rose by a third compared to the previous period (30 percentage points) and Q3 2018 (32 percentage points) according to statistics gathered from Kaspersky DDoS Protection. This growth was primarily due to a spike in malicious activity in autumn. In fact, 53% of the quarter’s DDoS attacks were carried out in September.
The rise is caused by a large number of rather simple types of attacks. Nonetheless, in previous quarters of this year, the total growth stemmed from a surge in the number of smart attacks, focusing on the application layer – usually carried out by skilled cybercriminals.
In Q3 2019, the share of ‘smart’ attacks dropped to 28% of all DDoS attacks, from 50% in Q2, and grew by only seven percentage points in the Q3 2018 results.
This change can be explained by a boom of DDoS activity at the beginning of the academic year. While the early summer months of the quarter were quite, the majority of DDoS attacks (53%) was detected in September. Kaspersky statistics reveal 60% of the attacks that were prevented during this month were conducted against schools and electronic journal sites. Based on this, Kaspersky experts suggest that these attacks were carried out by school-age hooligans who do not have a deep understanding of how to organize DDoS campaigns.