Over 50% surge in DDoS attacks during Q1 2018: Verisign report

There was a 53% increase in the Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the first quarter of 2018 as compared to the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a new report by global domain names and Internet security major Verisign.

A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to bring down networks, web-based applications, or services by overwhelming these resources with too much data or impairing them in some other way.

There was a 47% increase in the average of attack peak sizes in the same period compared to the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the report titled "Verisign Distributed Denial of Service Trends".

The largest volumetric and highest intensity DDoS attack was a multi-vector attack that peaked at approximately 70 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and over 7 Million packets per second (Mpps), Verisign said in a statement on Monday.

This attack sent a flood of traffic to the targeted network for about an hour, it added.

The report was based on observations and insights about attack frequency and size obtained from mitigations enacted on behalf of customers from Verisign DDOS Protection Services.

More than 65% of customers who experienced DDoS attacks in Q1 of this year were targeted multiple times, the report said, adding that overall, DDoS attacks remain unpredictable and vary widely in terms of speed and complexity.