Average peak bandwidth of DDoS attacks increased 52%, with DDoS attacks on the whole increasing 57%, during Q4 2014 year-on -year, according to the 2014 State of the Internet report by Akamai Technologies.
The quarter saw 51% more application layer attacks, 84% more multi-vector attacks and a 200% increase in 100+ Gbps attacks.
The report gives insight into the global attack threat landscape which includes DDoS attacks observed across the PLXrouted network.
The report highlighted that unprotected sites were vulnerable to DDoS attack, making DDoS attacks part of the common cybersecurity threatscape.
The rise of the Internet of Things devices also impacted the DDoS thread landscape, which showed that SSDP flood attacks increased by 214% when compared to Q3 2014, with one campaign managing to generate 106Gbps of malicious traffic.
The report found that 40% of all DDoS attacks did not rely on internet protocols because it used reflection techniques that are capable of responding with more traffic than they receive and does not require the attacker to gain control of the server or device.
For-hire DDoS services also allowed non-technical attackers to purchase ready-to-use DDoS services, with more than 44% of all attacks using multiple attack vectors.
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Akamai Cloud Security Business Unit vice president John Summers said: "An incredible number of DDoS attacks occurred in the fourth quarter, almost double what we observed in Q4 a year ago."
"Denial of service is a common and active threat to a wide range of enterprises. The DDoS attack traffic was not limited to a single industry, such as online entertainment that made headlines in December. Instead, attacks were spread among a wide variety of industries."
