Cybercrime: Teenage hackers target gaming and media websites

With a total of 1,510 DDoS attacks worldwide, service provider Akamai registered an increase of 180% in the third quarter of 2015 over the same period last year. About half of the reported incidents were directed against online games, suggesting a rather juvenile group of delinquents. Media and entertainment websites were nevertheless the target of the most massive attacks.

Although significantly more DDoS attacks have been registered in 2015, they have not lasted as long on average and occurred on lower bandwidths. Mega-attacks with more than 100 Gbit/s were less common, however: only eight such attacks were registered, which is significantly less than the twelve attacks in the second quarter and the 17 attacks in the third quarter of last year. During this period, the XOR DDoS botnet also registered a record level of 149 Gbit/s.

Attacks at the application level focused mainly on LFI (Local File Inclusion) and SQLI (SQL Injection). Retail chains (55% of all attacks) and the finance system (15%) were the hardest hit. Attacks on plugins for WordPress, the world’s leading content management system (CMS), are also on the rise. (Source: Akamai/bs)

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