Posted on August 17, 2022 at 7:53 PM
More Hackers Are Now Targeting Companies In Europe With DDoS Attacks
Recent reports have revealed that Europe has become one of the most targeted regions for cybercriminals. Hackers are investing additional efforts to launch more attacks against organizations in certain European countries. Many of them are deploying ransomware, spam, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) techniques for their attacks. DDoS is one of the most common types of cyber threats in the modern age.
Portugal Records An 81% Surge In DDoS Attacks
Portugal has become one of the most targeted countries in Europe, with an 81% increase in the number of cyberattacks on their organizations.
These types of threats have been existing since the advent of the internet. But it has never been more severe than it is today. While there have been several innovations in the cybercriminal space, threat actors have also learned more sophisticated ways to launch their attacks.
DDoS extortion, novel threats, and state-sponsored hacktivism have dominated the cyber threat landscape, hitting millions of organizations irrespective of their size.
One Of The Largest Cyber Incidences In Recent Times
One of the most notable cyber incidents in recent times is the Akami attack. On July 21 content delivery network for cloud security Akami identified and stopped one many believed to be the largest ever DDoS attack in Europe.
In the attack, threat actors targeted several customer IP addresses and launched a major global cyber operation against the Prolexic platform using the IP addresses.
Threat actors have also targeted another Akami client in Eastern Europe. This time, the attackers were targeting the system for more than a month, with 75 attacks. The threat actors utilized several methods and tools available to them, including PSH ACK flood, FIN push flood, PUSH flood, SYN flood, TCP anomaly, UDP, UDP fragmentation, and ICMP flood.
The consistent cyber incidents show that modern threat actors have access to a pool of highly-sophisticated systems and tools they can use. It is also evidence that they are not looking to slow down as long as they are getting financial gains from their attacks. While some of the attacks are financially motivated, some others are carried out by state-sponsored actors that want to score political points.
Attackers are using tools to develop a botnet of breached and infected networks and devices. The botnet is used as their first attack medium in every European internet-enabled device and cooperate network.
Creating Strategy To Prevent Network Attacks
It’s almost impossible to prevent a cyber-attack without putting the necessary defenses in place. Even with a sophisticated and robust corporate network, attacks also happen. Some high-magnitude DDoS attacks are very difficult to prevent. But the only way to mitigate attacks of this magnitude is to set up a task force of people, processes, and cutting-edge technology that will limit the attacks before they go overboard.
As a result, organizations have been advised to take a proactive approach to cybersecurity. They should also make use of the latest cyber-defense mechanism to mitigate attacks and prevent their operations from suffering collateral damage.
This will prevent them from facing consequences such as financial loss, legal ramifications, general downtime, and decreasing customer loyalty.
Cybersecurity experts have also given procedures that will help organizations stay safe from the damaging impact of attacks.
Things Organizations Can Do To Mitigate Attacks
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has advised that companies and businesses can reduce DDoS risks by implementing the latest prevention measures. They should also deploy cloud-based cybersecurity service providers and use DDoS security protocols to enable them to develop the most effective emergency scenarios and mitigation procedures.
Additionally, organizations should ensure that their software and systems are regularly updated to safeguard networks and provide end-point protection.
Organizations are required to create separate logs for each employee’s account while checking their credentials on every login session. Also, they should deploy system admins and give them managed admin rights to minimize employee access to networks and systems.
They should also enable VPN to hide their IP address. This masks the user’s IP address and encrypts internet traffic, making it more difficult for threat actors to hack into the network. It is one of the most efficient ways to prevent DDoS attacks since an IP address is required to target users in the such attack. They can also install strong firewalls that will detect suspicious traffic. It will also help a great deal to back up data, which will reduce the loss in case of an eventual attack or breach. It will also enable the organization to revert any alteration the attackers create.
