Botnet Operators now with Newer Techniques for DDoS Assaults

Security researchers from Prolexic a security company say that owners of bot networks are following new techniques for carrying out their DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) assaults.

The security company, which recently conducted a customer survey, discovered that during Q2-2012 (April-June 2012), the bandwidth consumption for DDoS assaults reduced while the assaults spread over more brief time-spans compared to earlier instances. Moreover, botnet operators spent the time for the attacks more aggressively so the packet/second rate increased 63%, the survey revealed.

Thus as per the security specialists, the above tendency suggests that botnet herders exercised greater caution regarding their assaults via keeping their operations brief so there would be fewer chances of getting detected as also network loss would remain minimal.

Furthermore, Prolexic reported that as the DDoS attackers found mitigation software blocking their attacks, they started shifting towards targets that could be easily victimized and at a faster pace. V3.co.uk published this dated July 17, 2012.

Interestingly, even though botnet owners had to conduct their operations more carefully, still they exhibited little indication of surrendering or retreating.

The survey then shows that DDoS assaults quantitatively increased over the entire sector of commerce, with a twofold rise in the reported assaults from Q2-2011.

Additionally, there was an 81% number of infrastructure assaults vis-à-vis the capacity of bandwidth as also the total routing infrastructures.

In the meantime according to Akamai another security company, DDoS assaults since 2009 have spiked 2,000 percent; and the company (referring to Akamai) is as well noticing a tendency for more treacherous application-layer assaults.

Importantly, Security Evangelist Martin McKeay with Akamai observes that attackers unlike before have reduced their incidences of bulk assaults with the intention to sap bandwidth. Volumetric assaults are being observed going down, he explains. DDoS attacks aren't any longer large like before. Attacks, which rely on exhausting Web-server resources, while affecting surfers on the Web, are on the rise, McKeay notes, according to the darkreading.com news published on July 17, 2012.

McKeay states that attacks, which are low and sluggish, have longer capacity to sustain; therefore they're more effective, while harder for spotting and tracking.

Related article: Botnet Misuses Google Analytics

» SPAMfighter News - 7/24/2012