In the first half of 2024, DDoS attacks over the Internet increased 265 percent worldwide compared to the second half of 2023, according to Radware’s latest threat analysis report.
Organizations in EMEA were the primary target of web DDoS attacks between January and June 2024, accounting for more than 90 percent of attacks.
Network-level DDoS attacks also increased: the average volume of blocked DDoS attacks per organization increased by 293 percent in EMEA, 116 percent in the Americas, and 302 percent in APAC compared to the same period in 2023. The Americas accounted for 58 percent of global attacks and 37 percent of volume, while EMEA accounted for 23 percent of attacks but mitigated 56 percent of global volume.
DNS DDoS attack activity quadrupled compared to the same period in 2023. The number of malicious DNS queries increased by 76 percent compared to the total number of queries observed throughout 2023.
“The first half of 2024 saw an increase in high-intensity, volumetric attacks characterized by an increasing emphasis on application infrastructure,” said Pascal Geenens, Radware’s Director of Threat Intelligence. “Global geopolitical tensions, including conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as international events such as national elections, Eurovision, UEFA Euro and the Olympic Games, continue to drive malicious activity. In the second half of the year, we expect attacks to continue to increase as more threat actors adopt AI technology, democratized by increasingly powerful and publicly available large language models. The importance of the upcoming elections in the United States and concerns about a slowdown in financial markets will also fuel cyber disruption.”
Hacktivist activity also continues, with 1,000 to 1,200 known attacks per month. Ukraine was the most attacked country, with 741 known attacks compared to 744 attacks in all of 2023. The United States came in second (604 known attacks), followed by Israel (542 known attacks) and India (364 known attacks).
The full report is available on the Radware site.
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