Network time protocol (NTP) amplification attacks jumped 371.43% in February 2014, according to a report from Prolexic Technologies.
During the same period, the average Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack volume surged 807.48%, while the average peak DDoS attack bandwidth increased by 217.97%.
The report put the increase down to new DDoS toolkits, which make it easier to carry out high-bandwidth, high-volume DDoS attacks against online targets with just a handful of servers.
Akamai Technologies Security SVP Stuart Scholly said: "In fact, the largest attacks we’ve seen on our network this year have all been NTP amplification attacks."
The protection services provider expects malicious actors to be capable of launching 100Gbps or even bigger attacks with the same toolkits, while using a small number of vulnerable NTP servers.
According to the report, the NTP amplification attacks were not focused on any particular sector and were spread across industries such as finance, gaming, e-Commerce, Internet and telecom, media, education, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers and security.
