DDoS Extortion Campaigns to Threaten 80% of European Businesses in the Next Year
July 06 2016 - 4:00AM
Business Wire
European IT security professionals call upon
Internet Service Providers to offer business customers more robust
and proactive cyber security protection against growing DDoS ransom
threat
80 percent of European IT security professionals expect their
business to be threatened with a DDoS ransom attack during the next
12 months, according to a new research report from Corero Network
Security (LSE: CNS), a leading global provider of First Line of
Defense® security solutions against DDoS attacks.
The research, which polled over 100 security professionals at
the Infosecurity Europe conference in London, highlights the
growing threat of cyber extortion attempts targeting businesses in
the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Last month, (May 2016),
the City of London Police warned of a new wave of ransom driven
DDoS attacks orchestrated by Lizard Squad, in which UK businesses
were told that they would be targeted by a DDoS attack if they
refused to pay five bitcoins, equivalent to just over £1,500.
Corero’s Security Operations Center also recorded a sharp increase
in hackers targeting their customers with such demands at the end
of 2015.
Even more concerning was the finding that almost half of these
IT security professionals (43%) thought that it was possible that
their organization might pay such a ransom demand.
Dave Larson, COO at Corero Network Security, comments:
“Extortion is one of the oldest tricks in the criminal’s book, and
one of the easiest ways for today’s hackers to turn a profit. When
your website is taken offline, it can cost businesses over $6500 a
minute in lost revenue, so it’s understandable why some
organizations choose to pay the ransom. But this is a dangerous
game, because just a few willing participants encourage these
threats to spread like wildfire. Rather than trying to negotiate
with criminals, the only way to beat these attacks is to have a
robust, real-time DDoS mitigation system in place, which can defend
against attacks and prevent downtime.
“Our research data indicates that DDoS ransom attack threats are
not only increasing in frequency but also being used by cyber
criminals in new and creative ways to extract money from victims.
For example, low-level, sub-saturating DDoS attacks are usually
used as a precursor to ransomware attacks. Because they are so
short – typically less than five minutes in duration – they are
usually not detected by security teams and allow hackers to find
pathways and test for vulnerabilities within a network which can
later be exploited through other techniques.”
More Robust DDoS Protection Needed from Internet Service
Providers
As DDoS attacks become increasingly sophisticated, many
organizations are looking further upstream to their Internet
Service Provider to protect them against DDoS threats. The majority
of those surveyed (59%) worry that their ISP does not provide
enough protection against DDoS attacks, and almost a quarter (24%)
of respondents believes that their ISP is to blame if a DDoS attack
affects their business.
Furthermore, over half of those surveyed (53%) believe that ISPs
are hiding behind net neutrality laws – the concept of treating all
online traffic equally – as a way to dodge their responsibilities
in terms of protecting their customers from cyber attacks, such as
DDoS.
Dave Larson continues, “A telecom company’s role has
traditionally been to direct traffic from one destination to
another, without passing judgment about the content. Net
neutrality, in which carriers treat all data the same, was prized
above all else. But the tide of opinion is changing and many
customers now want their telcos to deliver not a decaying mélange
of Internet traffic and increasingly sophisticated attack vectors,
but a ‘clean pipe’ of good traffic, where the threats have been
proactively removed. Providers now have a golden opportunity to
offer their customers DDoS protection-as-a-service, and open up
valuable new revenue streams in the process – or risk losing their
customers.”
Almost 60% of those surveyed (58%) said that would leave their
service provider because of poor service, and over a fifth (21%)
would leave if they did not offer adequate protection against DDoS
attacks.
The research report was compiled by Corero Network Security and
examined the views of 103 European IT security professionals at the
Infosecurity Europe conference in London during 7-9 June 2016.
An infographic displaying the results of the research is
available here.
About Corero Network Security
Corero Network Security is the leader in real-time,
high-performance DDoS defense solutions. Service providers, hosting
providers and online enterprises rely on Corero’s award winning
technology to eliminate the DDoS threat to their environment
through automatic attack detection and mitigation, coupled with
complete network visibility, analytics and reporting. This
next-generation technology provides a First Line of Defense®
against DDoS attacks in the most complex environments while
enabling a more cost effective economic model than previously
available. For more information, visit www.corero.com.
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Media ContactFor Corero Network SecurityJohn Gates,
617-548-8972Jgates@elevatecom.com
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