The first half of 2023 has seen a massive surge in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, unveiling a new level of sophistication, frequency, and impact that organizations must confront. This rising threat is particularly exemplified by the popularity in web DDoS attacks, which have emerged as a formidable danger across industries and geographies. A Web DDoS Tsunami attack is an evolved type of HTTP DDoS Flood cyberattack that is sophisticated, aggressive, and very difficult to detect and mitigate without blocking legitimate traffic.
In this article, we’ll explore the key trends within the modern DDoS landscape, the significance of web DDoS attacks, and how businesses can safeguard themselves against these increasingly complex assaults.
And also, we’ve completed four fantastic resources related to this topic to help you understand how you can best stay protected against the attacks highlighted in this article.
The Evolving Threat Landscape
As you might have discovered through recent news highlights, DDoS attacks have reached astonishing heights in 2022. Data from our partner’s (Radware) Threat Hub highlights a remarkable 152% YoY increase in blocked DDoS events in 2022 compared to 2021, coupled with a 32% YoY rise in total blocked attack volume. The largest DDoS attack in 2022 reached a staggering 1.46 Tbps – a 2.8x surge from the previous year’s record.
Furthermore, these attackers have expanded beyond financial motivations, with political motives now fueling a good chunk of DDoS attack motives. The shift began in tandem with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, showcasing an unprecedented synchronization between cyberattacks and real-world events. This trend has led to a surge in state-sponsored hacktivist groups targeting organizations across various sectors, resulting in a far-reaching impact.
Three Key Trends Shaping DDoS Attacks
Factor #1: Rise of State Actors
The shift from financially-driven hackers to state-backed hacktivist groups has significantly altered the overall landscape. State-sponsored groups possess far more resources and organization, widening their capabilities to create sophisticated attack tools, target a broader range of victims, and operate with relative impunity.
Factor #2: Attacks Growing in Scale and Complexity
Attackers are employing new tools that enable larger and more intricate attacks. They mix multiple attack vectors within a single attack campaign, creating difficulties for traditional mitigation technologies and practices.
Factor #3: Shift to Application Layer Attacks
DDoS attacks are increasingly targeting the application layer, complicating detection and mitigation. The deployment of advanced, encrypted web DDoS attack tools has rendered traditional defenses less effective against these sophisticated tactics.
What Exactly Are Web DDoS Attacks & Why Are They Harder to Mitigate?
The amalgamation of these trends, mentioned above, has birthed web DDoS attacks as the premier vector for modern DDoS threats. These attacks exploit the application-layer HTTP or HTTPS protocols, directing a barrage of requests toward web applications to overwhelm servers. Since most web traffic is encrypted, detecting malicious intent becomes complex, making these attacks especially challenging to mitigate.
Web DDoS Challenges:
- Asymmetric Processing: SSL/TLS protocols demand more server resources, enabling attackers to generate massive attacks with relatively few requests.
- Encrypted Payloads: Majority of web traffic is encrypted, rendering inspection by traditional defenses ineffective.
- Attack on Application Logic: Application-layer attacks mimic legitimate requests, requiring deep understanding to detect abnormalities indicative of an attack.
- Advanced Attack Tools: Attackers use new tools that deploy evasion technique such as dynamic IP addresses, randomized headers, and more.
In Summary
The past 18 months have seen unprecedented growth in DDoS attack activity, which have increased in size, frequency, and sophistication. This growth has been driven by a combination of factors. While each of these factors stands on its own, they coalesced into a fundamental shift in the threat landscape, which is more dangerous than ever before. Of these changes, web DDoS tsunami attacks have emerged as a uniquely devastating threat to organizations, threatening the availability of mission-critical applications and services. Traditional DDoS protection methods, however, are incapable of providing adequate protection against these attacks, calling for a new approach to DDoS protection.
Check Point’s behavioral-based Cloud Web DDoS Protection provides real-time, automated, and accurate protection against web DDoS attacks. By combining rate-based and non-rate-based parameters, Check Point’s algorithms can granularly distinguish between legitimate and attack traffic, and block malicious traffic without impacting legitimate users.
If you are facing a Web DDoS attack:
- Contact Check Point immediately for emergency onboarding to our DDoS protection services
- Head to our website to learn more: https://www.checkpoint.com/quantum/ddos-protector/
- Download our newest resources: