The United Kingdom was the world’s number one source of DDoS attack traffic in Q3 2015, as the total number of attacks globally jumped 180% year-on-year, according to Akamai.
The content delivery firm’s State of the Internet report for the quarter revealed that the UK was surprisingly responsible for 26% of attacks in the three months ending September—beating China (21%) and the US (17%).
This is all the more noteworthy given that the UK didn’t even make the top 10 a year ago, and has almost doubled its share from the quarter previously (10%).
Akamai senior security advocate, Martin McKeay, argued that this could be a long term change, claiming “there’s no evidence that this will turn around in the short term.”
There’s no single cause for the rise of the UK in application layer attacks, he told Infosecurity.
“There have been an increasing number of DDoS attacks on financial institutions, retailers and other businesses in the last year, most notably at the hands of DD4BC and the Armada Collective,” he added.
“There has also been a shift of attack traffic from the application layer to the network layer, emphasizing the growth in UK attack traffic. Finally, a decrease in the application layer attack traffic from the US and China has made the increased traffic from the UK stand out even more.”
In addition, the UK was a top 10 source for web application attacks in Q3 2015—in joint sixth place with a 3% share.
But it’s also a big target for these types of attack—in fact second globally (7%), although some way behind the US in top spot (75%).
DDoS attacks globally jumped nearly a quarter (23%) from the previous three months from already record levels, although in general, attacks are shorter with lower average peak bandwidth and volume, Akamai said.
Photo © Mikrobiuz