Akamai Technologies recently successfully managed one of the most significant and sophisticated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks ever encountered.
The incident, which targeted a major financial institution in Israel, persisted for nearly a full day, during which Akamai effectively intercepted around 419 terabytes of harmful traffic. The assault commenced at 8:05 UTC on July 15 and leveraged a widespread botnet to simultaneously assault over 278 IP addresses. This attack was characterized by a combination of techniques including UDP flood, DNS reflection, and PSH+ACK.
Key details of the attack include:
- Duration: Nearly 24 hours, with a peak intensity over a three-hour period.
- Peak Traffic: Ranged from 300 to 798 gigabits per second (Gbps).
- Total Traffic Blocked: About 419 terabytes.
- Significance: Marked as the sixth-largest peak traffic DDoS attack ever neutralized by Akamai Prolexic.
The protracted and voluminous nature of this attack is remarkable, as most DDoS incidents are short-lived.
This event highlights an increasing trend in DDoS threats, particularly within the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region. Akamai’s data shows a steady rise in DDoS incidents in EMEA since early 2019, with higher peaks compared to other regions.
The advanced nature and scale of the attack suggest it may have been orchestrated by a state-sponsored actor, considering the geopolitical context and its focus on the Israeli financial sector. This raises concerns about the possibility of similar large-scale attacks targeting organizations globally.
The financial institution under attack had recently adopted Akamai’s Prolexic platform, which was pivotal in mitigating the threat. This underscores the necessity for robust, cloud-based DDoS protection solutions, particularly for entities in vulnerable sectors or regions.
Akamai advises that organizations depending solely on on-premises DDoS mitigation tools or shared protection from hosting services may be especially susceptible to such severe attacks.
As DDoS tactics evolve, businesses should reassess their security strategies and consider more comprehensive, scalable protection solutions to defend against these increasingly sophisticated threats.
