Australia now a top 10 source of DDoS attack traffic

Australia became one of the world's top 10 sources of DDoS attack traffic for the first time during the second quarter, according to Akamai.

The content delivery network provider's latest State of the Internet report shows that Australia accounted for 4% of global DDoS attack traffic during the quarter.

Akamai attributed Australia's debut appearance on the top 10 list in part to increased adoption of high-speed internet services thanks to the nbn.

The total number of DDoS attacks worldwide more than doubled year-on-year for the third consecutive quarter, the report states. The data suggest a trend towards less powerful but longer duration attacks, but the number of DDoS attacks peaking at more than 100 Gbps also increased.

There were 12 attacks peaking at over 100 Gbps, with the largest attack measured at 240 Gbps and persisting for over 13 hours.

Akamai also analysed web application attack statistics, finding that 49% of such attacks during the quarter used the Shellshock vulnerability, although 95% of Shellshock attacks targeted a single financial services company.

SSQL injection attacks accounted for 26% of all web application attacks and local file inclusion attacks made up 18%. Remote file inclusion, PHP injection, command injection, OGNL injection, Java Expressing Language and malicious file upload attacks constituted the remaining 7%.

Image courtesy of Andrew Mager under CC