Posted on November 27, 2020 at 3:58 PM
DDoS Attacks on E-commerce in Europe Rose by 400% During the Pandemic
Security experts from Stormwall have revealed that the pandemic saw the rise of DDoS attacks by more than 400%. The experts, who gave detailed analysis, collected data from clients in a wide range of e-commerce businesses.
After analyzing the data, the experts published the reports, revealing an escalated number of attacks during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the report, there was a massive increase in the number of DDoS attacks between February and October this year.
When compared to the same period last year, the number of DDoS attacks quadrupled, the researcher noted.
Attack growth caused by healthcare competition
The global pandemic has affected virtually all sectors of the world economy. While many sectors saw a major drop in activities, the health sector was the busiest.
But to gain an advantage of the competition levels, some firms used DDoS attacks. Hackers also increased their attacking intensity on businesses and health care institutions to extort money in ransomware attacks.
DDoS is one of the worst forms of attack because an unavailable site could lead to unimaginable loss of profits. As a result, some companies are forced to pay the ransom demands to get their site back on track and fully operational.
After the victimized firm pays the ransom, it hopes to gain full control of the services. But it doesn’t always happen that way, as the hackers may want to explore further extortion options.
Based on the StormWall data, online fashion stores also saw an increased number of attacks, as it rose 4 times more than the previous year. Threat actors launched attacks on online renovation sites 7 times more than they did last year. The number of DDoS attacks on electronic stores also grew by 5 times.
But the highest attack levels were recorded in the furniture stores, where the number of DDoS attacks on online companies selling furniture grew 8 times compared to last year.
A new type of DDoS attacks on the rise
The security researchers at StormWall also revealed that DDoS attacks are taking a new dimension. It shows that threat actors are increasingly becoming more sophisticated than before. State-sponsored hackers are using more complex tools to load networks and cause heavy upheaval.
Last year, most of the attacks were perpetrated over HTTP protocol. But the number of attacks over the UDP and TCP increased by 14.1% and 20.6% respectively. The remaining 65.3% of attacks were carried out via the HTTP protocol.
The increased use of sophisticated tools is caused by the development of the “stressors” software market. The software is now available at a more affordable rate. Even the number of DDoS attacks through HTTP has increased by 300% between February and September this year, compared to the same period last year.
Increase threat sophistication calls for increased security levels
As threat actors advance in their attacking methods, retailers and eCommerce sites are increasingly finding it difficult to deal with them. According to the researchers, what these threat actors do it to look for vulnerabilities that need only a few amounts of requests to dislodge the website and make it unavailable.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of StormWall Ramil Khantimirov noted that the high rate of DDoS attack is a result of several factors. The threat actors are getting more sophisticated every day, and organizations need to protect their systems with the highest level of cybersecurity system they can get.
A good security system will easily spot the threat before it becomes a big issue for the firm or organization.
But not all defense systems are equipped to handle this type of threat. For a defense mechanism to protect a site against the threat, it needs to have superior DDoS protection, such as self-learning and proactive analysis.
Those who can get a defense system with proactive analysis features will stand a better chance at protecting their systems, according to Ramil Khantimirov.
