2013 was a banner year for DDoS attacks and malware. According to PandaLabs, more than ten million malware variants were created in the first nine months of 2013. Trojans accounted for 76.8%, worms 13.1%, and viruses 9.23%. Trojans are the little pesky creatures that create backdoors for hackers, enabling them to do their dirty work. However, if the first quarter is any indication, 2014 is going to top 2013. Here is a recap of some recent high profile DDoS attacks.
Recent DDoS Attacks in Size
- Incapsula – 100Gbps
- Elance/oDesk – knocked offline
- CloudFlare – 400Gbps
- Bryan Krebs – 200Gbps
- Aweber – knocked offline in Feb
- StatCounter – knocked offline
- 162k WordPress sites used to launch DDoS attacks
- Malware: Target – 40M credit cards stolen
- Malware : Sally Beauty Supply – 25k credit card stolen
- Malware: Neiman Marcus and Michaels
Year of DDoS and Malware Attacks
If you’re an online company, this is what keeps you up at night: network DDoS attack, application layer DDoS attack, advanced persistent threat, zero-day and advanced malware. And that’s not including attacks against mobile devices.
Every online company needs to deliver over a Content Delivery Network. CDNs are the only ones that can absorb a full scale DDoS attack. Some CDNs are better equipped to handle a massive network based DDoS attack, and others are better at protecting against application based DDoS attacks. Akamai offers complete DDoS protection. However, if you’re a smaller online company with limited budget, than Incapsula is a good fit. Incapsula is the other CDN that can handle every type of DDoS attack.
My Prediction for biggest DDoS Attack in 2014
The record DDoS attack is 400Gbps, which happened against CloudFlare. In the next few months, I predict we’ll see a DDoS attack in the range of 700Gbps. Akamai, Limelight, and EdgeCast are ready. Are the other CDNs ready?