DD4BC – SurfWatch Labs, Inc.

The consumer goods sector has seen more chatter around DDoS than any other sector so far in 2016, according to data from SurfWatch Labs.

2016-04-20_ddos — The Consumer Goods Sector has seen the most DDoS-related CyberFacts this year, including attacks against Blizzard, the BBC, Ireland’s National Lottery, and many more.

The consumer goods sector has become a popular target for DDoS attacks, with new groups like DD4BC emerging on the scene and attempting to extort money from victims in exchange for not launching a DDoS attack against them. Retail stores – especially online retailers – make appealing targets for cybercriminals as they are more likely to pay a ransom demand to avoid service interruption due to the amount of money that could be potentially lost during a DDoS attack.

Gaming networks such as Steam, Xbox Live, and the PlayStation Network are popular targets. Last week, the infamous cyber group Lizard Squad launched a DDoS attack against Blizzard’s gaming servers, effectively taking the servers offline for a couple hours.

DDoS attacks are a popular method of cyber-attack due to their ease of execution and price point. There are DDoS-for-hire services on the web that can be utilized for just $38 per hour. This price is shockingly low considering companies have reportedly lost anywhere from $5,000 to $40,000 per hour during a DDoS attack.

DDoS will remain a popular trend in cybercrime. However, DDoS related CyberFacts have decreased since peaking in January 2016.

2016-04-18_ddos3 — DDoS attacks against high-profile targets such as the BBC and Ireland’s National Lottery led to a surge in DDoS-related chatter in January 2016. However, the number of CyberFacts related to DDoS has since dropped.

Layer 7 DDoS Attack Makes Headlines

Earlier this month, a humongous Layer 7 DDoS attack was spotted reaching 8.7 Gbps of bandwidth through the Nitol botnet, which set a new record for this specific type of DDoS attack. While 8.7 Gbps doesn’t seem like much of a figure compared to traditional DDoS attacks of over 100 Gbps, Layer 7 DDoS attacks are different.

A DoS attack is an attempt by a criminal or hacktivist group to make a computer or network resource unavailable. This is done by interrupting a host’s services that are connected to the Internet. The most common method of DoS is a DDoS attack. DDoS attacks use botnets –- an enslaved group of computers –- to push massive amounts of communication to a targeted server to achieve its goal of service disruption.

A Layer 7 DDoS attack has the same end goal as a traditional DDoS attack, except for a few small differences. It only needs to use a small amount of network packets to disrupt service as this will create massive server processing operations that will exhaust a target’s CPU and RAM resources. This means that a Layer 7 DDoS attack can be pulled off by sending only a few thousand requests per second.

As recent DDoS attacks have shown, cybercriminals have a variety of different ways to disrupt services or attempt to extort money from organization. Businesses should be prepared for the possibility of these attacks and work with a reputable DDoS mitigation company if they are concerned about those risks.