DDoS attack activity soars in first half of 2024
In the first half of 2024, web DDoS attacks surged globally 265 percent compared to the second half of 2023, according to the latest threat analysis report from Radware.
Organizations in EMEA were the primary target of web DDoS attacks between January and June of 2024, being subject to more than 90 percent of the attacks.
Network layer DDoS attacks inceased too, average DDoS volume blocked per organization grew by 293 percent in EMEA, 116 percent in the Americas, and 302 percent in APAC, compared to the same period in 2023. The Americas faced 58 percent of global attacks and 37 percent of the volume, while EMEA accounted for 23 percent of the attacks but mitigated 56 percent of the global volume.
DNS DDoS attack activity quadrupled compared to the same period in 2023. The number of malicious DNS queries grew by 76 percent compared to the total number of queries observed during all of 2023.
"During the first half of 2024, high-intensity, volumetric attacks surged, marked by a growing emphasis on the application infrastructure," says Pascal Geenens, Radware's director of threat intelligence. "World-wide geopolitical tensions, including conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as international events, like country elections, Eurovision, UEFA Euro, and the Olympics, continue to drive malicious activity. In the back half of the year, we expect attacks to continue to climb, as more threat actors adopt AI technology democratized through increasingly powerful and publicly available large language models. The gravity of the upcoming election in the United States and concerns over decelerating financial markets are also set to fuel cyber disruption."
Hacktivist activity continues too, with between 1,000 to 1,200 claimed attacks per month. Ukraine was the most targeted country with 741 claimed attacks compared to 744 attacks in all of 2023. The United States ranked second (604 claimed attacks), followed by Israel (542 claimed attacks), and India (364 claimed attacks).
The full report is available on the Radware site.
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