Average DDoS attack bandwidth has increased 718% during the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) to 48.25Gbps and the average packet-per-second rate reached 32.4 million, up 7.14%, compared to Q412, according to a new report.
Prolexic Technologies’ latest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) report reveals the overall infrastructure attacks rose by 3.65%, while overall application attacks dropped 3.85% , leading to 1.75% rise in total number of DDoS attacks.
Prolexic president Stuart Scholly said average packet-per-second rate and average bit rate spiked in the first quarter and both are growing at a faster rate.
"When you have average – not peak – rates in excess of 45 Gbps and 30 million packets-per-second, even the largest enterprises, carriers, and quite frankly most mitigation providers, are going to face significant challenges," Scholly said.
During the quarter, about 10% of DDoS attacks against the company’s clients averaged about 60Gbps, along with a attack peaked at 130Gbps in March 2013.
Additionally, the company also claims that there was a rise in attack volume and average attack duration, while Layer 3 and Layer 4 infrastructure attacks accounted for 76.54% of total attacks, with Layer 7 application layer attacks contributing for the remaining 23.46%.
"Nearly everyone has been focused on bandwidth and gigabits per second, but it’s the packet rate that’s causing the most damage and presenting the biggest challenge," Scholly said.
"These packet rates are above the thresholds of all but the most expensive routers and line cards and we are seeing networks buckle as a result."
During the period, China topped the list of attack source country rankings which was joined by the US, Germany and Iran.
