DDoS attacks have risen by 75pc worldwide, says new report

23 Apr 2014

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks rose by 75pc worldwide in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the previous quarter, the latest ‘State of the Internet’ report from Akami Technologies suggests.

The report, which has been released online today, indicates that 43pc of all DDoS occur in China, the largest of any single state, while the United States revealed growth in the number of attacks at 19pc, whether they be from hacker groups, organisations, or even established governments.

In total, Akami claims to have accounted for 188 unique countries as the sources of all DDoS attacks through tracing the sources’ IP addresses.

The biggest-hit sectors were enterprise and commerce. Companies in those sectors accounted for just under 70pc of all reported attacks during Q4, with just more than half of these being reported in the United States alone.

Other information gathered for the report included the world’s broadband internet adoption. South Korea continued to have the highest average connection speed at 21.9Mbps, while Hong Kong has the highest average peak connection speed at 68Mbps.

Globally, the average connection speed increased by 5.5pc to 3.8Mbps, with Ireland reaching an average speed of 10.4Mbps.

Akira infographic

DDoS attack image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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