State of the Internet - Security Report
The Q3 2015 report provides analysis and insight into the global cloud security threat landscape
Akamai mitigated a record 1,510 DDoS attacks, a 180% increase over Q3 a year ago; and 23% more than last quarter
The use of reflection-based DDoS methods by DDoS-for-hire sites resulted in smaller attacks on average than we have observed from infection-based botnets
Retail suffered the vast majority of web application attacks -- 55%; online gaming hit by the most DDoS attacks; media and entertainment faced more of the biggest DDoS attacks
"Akamai has been seeing greater numbers of denial of service attacks every quarter, and the upward trend continued in the most recent quarter. Although recent DDoS attacks were on average smaller and shorter, they still posed a significant cloud security risk," said John Summers, vice president, Cloud Security Business Unit, Akamai. "Attacks are being fueled by the easy availability of DDoS-for-hire sites that identify and abuse exposed Internet services, such as SSDP, NTP, DNS, CHARGEN, and even Quote of the Day."
DDoS metrics
Compared with Q3 2014
179.66% increase in total DDoS attacks
25.74% increase in application layer (Layer 7) DDoS attacks
198.1% increase in infrastructure layer (Layer 3 & 4) DDoS attacks
15.65% decrease in average attack duration: 18.86 vs. 22.36 hours
65.58% decrease in average peak attack bandwidth
88.72% decrease in average peak attack volume
462.44% increase in reflection attacks
52.94% decrease in attacks > 100 Gbps: 8 vs. 17
Compared with Q2 2015
22.79% increase in total DDoS attacks
42.27% decrease in application layer (Layer 7) DDoS attacks
30.21% increase in infrastructure layer (Layer 3 & 4) DDoS attacks
8.87% decrease in average attack duration: 18.86 vs. 20.64 hours
25.13% decrease in average peak attack bandwidth
42.67% decrease in average peak attack volume
40.14% increase in reflection attacks
33.33% decrease in attacks > 100 Gbps: 8 vs. 12
Web application attack metrics
Compared with Q2 2015
96.36% increase in HTTP web application attacks
79.02% decrease in HTTPS web application attacks
21.64% increase in SQLi attacks
204.73% increase in LFI attacks
57.55% increase in RFI attacks
238.98% increase in PHPi attacks
Download the report
A complimentary copy of the Q3 2015 State of the Internet - Security Report is available as a free PDF download at http://www.stateoftheinternet.com/security-report.