In the past few years, the DDoS attacks have doubled showing a significant hike in the attempts by the attackers to threaten the victim of such attacks unless the required ransom is paid to them. Security analysts in Neustar (a global information services and technology company and leader in identity resolution) studied cyber threats and illegal activities and it was found that the number of DDoS attacks between 2019 and 2020 rose by 154 percent. The areas that took a major hit are financial services, telecommunications, and government departments. This figure indicates the rising number, frequency, and severity of cyber-attacks of network sort as remote operations moved companies and grew employee dependency on the internet.
DDoS attacks are emerging, even more frequently now. One important factor why the DDoS attacks have become more common is that even for low-level cybercriminals they are fairly easy to carry out. The rise in smaller DDoS attacks has been largely linked with the rising attack sophistication and intensity.
Instead of relying on ransomwares or other viruses to take a network-related hostage, DDoS attackers literally threaten DDoS victims if the payment – usually requested in bitcoin –is not received in time. In order to convince the victim to pay, offenders frequently present an assessment of what could come with a short-lived DDoS attack. All that the DDoS attackers require is a botnet to flood traffic to target networks – which can be recruited at cheap underground forums.
"Organisations should avoid paying these ransoms. Instead, any attack should be reported to the nearest law enforcement field office, as the information may help identify the attackers and ultimately hold them accountable," said Michael Kaczmarek, vice president of security product management at Neustar.
Yet amid warnings of going off-line, it is advised to refrain from reacting to the demands of cybercriminals, so that ransom-led DDoS attacks can be contained to some extent.
