Computer security company Kaspersky Labs has said that distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attacks are increasingly being used as a form of protest against the activities of both governments and major corporations.
The Moscow based computer security company has said that Q2 2011 saw numerous DDoS attacks with a variety of motives.
The company said that in the quarter, the longest DDoS attack lasted 60 days, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 9 seconds, while the highest number of DDoS attacks against a single site was 218.
The most active hacker groups in the Q2 2011 were LulzSec and Anonymous. They organized DDoS attacks on government sites in the US, the UK, Spain, Turkey, Iran and several other countries, said Kaspersky.
In Q2 2011, 89% of DDoS traffic was generated in 23 countries, said Kaspersky.
The US and Indonesia topped the rating with each country accounting for 5% of all DDoS traffic.
According to data from Kaspersky Security Network, Kaspersky Lab’s globally-distributed threat monitoring network, in Q2 2011 almost every second machine (48%) in Indonesia was subjected to a local malware infection attempt.
The company also said that online shopping sites, including e-stores, auctions, and buy and sell message boards, were increasingly targeted by cybercriminals, with websites of this category accounted for a quarter of all attacks.
Weekdays see the most active use of the Internet. It is on these days that various web resources are most in demand and that DDoS attacks are likely to inflict the maximum amount of damage on websites, said Kaspersky.
Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team Senior Malware Analyst Yury Namestnikov said organisations rarely publicise the fact that they have been targeted by DDoS attacks in order to protect their reputation.
"Cybercriminals, meanwhile, are increasingly using DDoS attacks as a diversionary tactic when launching more sophisticated attacks such as those on online banking systems. Complex attacks of this nature are particularly damaging in that they can cause significant losses for the financial institutions as well as their clients," said Namestnikov.
