Telecom saw more distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks than four other verticals combined during the second quarter, according to a new report from Lumen. Nearly three quarters (74%) of attacks were on telecom customers.
The four verticals that followed were the government (9%), gaming (5%), hosting (4%) and software and technology (3%). Lumen said that 44% of attacks it saw during the second quarter were multi-vector in nature, meaning that they combined more than one technique.
The report was part of an update on the performance of Lumen’s DDoS Mitigation and Application Protection Services which it rolled out during the quarter.
“As attackers modify their tactics, it’s critical for businesses to have highly available, dynamic, high-performing and secure applications,” Peter Brecl, Lumen’s director of product management for DDoS mitigation and application protection, said in a press release.
“Companies need the best mitigation controls to protect their customers and their business from DDoS and application-layer attacks without decreasing performance.”
The report found that attackers are continually changing the number and types of vector combinations they employ and that these types of attacks are “significantly more complex” than single vector attacks. The company said that use of application programming interfaces (APIs) continues to rise and that companies should employ safeguards to protect against such attacks.
Other highlights from the report:
- The average attack size Lumen scrubbed during the first quarter of 2023 was 1.9 Gbps, a 6% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022 and the highest average of the past year.
- The average packet-rate based attack scrubbed during the first quarter was 838 Kpps (kilo packets per second), a 137% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022 and the largest average of the past year.
- During the second quarter Lumen mitigated 5,472 DDoS attacks, a 20% year-over-year increase and an average of 63 attacks per day. Sixty-three percent of DDos attacks had attack periods of less than 10 minutes, a 23% year-over-year increase.
In October 2020, Lumen announced what it called significant upgrades to its DDos Mitigation Service.
