Q1 Average DDoS Attack - 1.8 (Arbor) or 48 Gbps (Prolexic)?

 
Few days ago Prolexic reported that ".. average attack bandwidth totaled 48.25 Gbps in Q1 2013, a 718 percent increase over last quarter" (here) - indeed an amazing number, far beyond the capacity of almost any enterprise connection  and a real threat to many ISPs.

Arbor Networks shows a significantly lower numbers. While the average attack volume also shows a nice growth (+19.5%), it reaches just 1.77 Gbps (see chart below for peak attack size). Not only the number and growth rate make more sense, it is also a more reasonable use of resources by those who try to attack even the bigger enterprises.

Arbor says that ".. attacks above 10 and even 20Gb/sec now occur multiple times per day somewhere in the world. Every day hundreds, or even thousands, of attacks take place utilizing different attack vectors, having different levels of complexity and different motivations and resources behind them. For enterprise network operators, it is important to have a broad view of what is going on out there .. Proportion of attacks in the 2 – 10Gb/sec range grows from 15% to 21.5%" 

See "Q1 Key Findings from ATLAS" -here.

Prolexic: Average DDoS Attack Bandwidth Up by 718% (!!!!)

 
High volume DDoS attacks are now a real threat also to many carriers and ISPs, according to Prolexic, as average DDoS attack now takes more than 48 Gbps!

  

The DDoS prevention service company's latest report (Q1 2013) shows that "average attack bandwidth totaled 48.25 Gbps in Q1 2013, a 718 percent increase over last quarter, and the average packet-per-second rate reached 32.4 million". Other indexes grew in a reasonable numbers -  Average attack duration increases 7.14 percent from 32.2 hours to 34.5 hours  and total number of DDoS attacks increased by 1.75%.

Stuart Scholly (pictured), president, Prolexic said: “Average packet-per-second rate and average bit rate spiked in the first quarter and both are growing at a fast clip .. 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”.

  

See "Average Attack Bandwidth up 718 percent;Average Packet-Per-Second Rate Reaches 32.4 Million According to Prolexic’s Q1 2013 DDoS Report" - here. 

[Prolexic Q4 DDoS Report]: 27.5% More Attacks; Average Attack 32 Hours, 5.9 Gbps

  

A recent report by Prolexic Technologies, find that the ".. scale and diversity of attacks increased against its global client base in Q4 2012 .. While Q4 media reports focused on large DDoS attacks primarily against U.S. financial services companies, Prolexic also mitigated 50+ Gbps DDoS attacks against clients in the e-Commerce and software as a service (SaaS) sectors"

Prolexic provided the following statistics for Q4, 2012:

	Q4, 2012	Change from Q3, 2012	Change from Q4 2011
Number of attacks		+27.5%	+19%
Infrastructure (network) attacks	Share - 75% SYN - 24%, ICMP - 18% UDP-15% DNS-4.7%	+17%*	+15%*
Application attacks	Share - 25% HTTP Get - 20%	+72%*	+30%*
Average Attack  length	32.2 hours	+67%	-6%
Average attack size	5.9 Gbps	+20%	+13%

^{* Increase in the number of attacks.}

See "Large-Scale DDoS Attacks Grow Bigger and More Diversified According to Prolexic’s Latest Report" - here.

Prolexic Sees 20Gbps DDoS Attacks

Prolexic Technologies announced that "..the size of DDoS attacks increased significantly against its global client base in Q3 2012 .. During Q3, Prolexic mitigated seven DDoS attacks of more than 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps) for different clients across multiple industries".

Stuart Scholly (pictured), president, Prolexic said: "Last year, a DDoS attack in excess of 20 Gigabits per second was not able, but today it seems commonplace .. To put this in perspective, very few enterprises in the world have a network infrastructure with the capacity to withstand bandwidth floods of this size”.

Prolexic’s Q3 2012 Global DDoS Attack Report also shows, compared to Q3 2011 - "88% increase in total number of DDoS attacks, Significant decrease in average attack duration: 19 hours vs. 33 hours and 230%increase in average attack bandwidth .. Like last quarter, traditional Layer 3 and Layer 4 infrastructure DDoS attacks were by far the favored attack type, accounting for four out of five attacks during the quarter with application Layer 7 DDoS attacks making up the remainder".

See "Increasing Size of Individual DDoS Attacks Define Third Quarter, According to Prolexic’s Report" - here.

Prolexic Q2 Report: "Shorter, but higher volume DDoS Attacks"

 
Prolexic released an updated report showing that "Even though the total number of DDoS denial of service attacks increased 10% this quarter, the Prolexic Security Engineering & Response Team (PLXsert) logged an 8% decline in application layer DDoS attacks, which accounted for 19% of all attacks. Infrastructure attacks (Layer 3 and 4) against bandwidth capacity and routing infrastructures totaled 81%".

".. GET Floods, the most popular Layer 7attack type, continued to decline in popularity. In Q2 2011, GET Flood attacks accounted for 22% of all DDoS attack campaigns mitigated by Prolexic. In Q2 2012, GET Flood attacks account for just 14% .. PLXsert also identified a rise in popularity for certain types of infrastructure-directed DDoS attacks: ICMP, SYN, and UDP floods. In Q2 2011, these attack types accounted for 55% of attacks mitigated by Prolexic. In Q1 2012, they accounted for 59% and this quarter, the total percentage has increased to 67%".

See "Application Layer (Layer 7) DDoS Attacks Decline According to Prolexic’s Q2 2012 Report" - here.