Ddos attacks have reached a dangerous peak

Akamai and Fbi denounce the rise in distributed denial of service attacks. They are accompanied by expensive bitcoin ransoms

(Photo: Getty Images) Akamai, a US connectivity service company, has reported that the highest peak of Ddos attacks with bitcoin ransoms is underway. Following the report, the FBI has chosen to globally disclose a notice informing global organizations of the potential risks to which they are exposed with an attack of this magnitude.

According to the security alert issued in August by Akamai the main perpetrators of this spike in Ddos attacks would be the groups of cybercriminals identified with the names of Armada Collective, Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear and Lazarus Group.

The distributed denial of service (Ddos) attack is a threat IT is as simple to implement as it is effective since it is able to knock out a site, a company or entire critical infrastructures such as, for example, hospitals or airports in a few moments.

To best explain how it works this type of attack just think of a crowd of people trying to pass through a door at the same time, designed to allow access to one person at a time, thus preventing access to the room / website and crippling normal operations.

Although some of the company's customers have reported attacks that touched 2 Terabits of data per second (Tbps), Akamai has recorded attacks that on average hit with ranges ranging from 20 to 300 Gigabits per second (Gbps) by greatly diversifying the attack vectors used by cybercriminals.

The company has observed an alarming increase in threats and ransom requests sent to companies in the financial, tourism, technology and ecommerce sectors. in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region.

The ransom demanded by cybercriminals would be around 1 0 bitcoin, which is equivalent to approximately 113 thousand dollars. Some requests have come to touch 20 bitcoins, about 226 thousand dollars. These requests are greater than in 2019 campaigns which typically required between 1 or 2 bitcoins.

“If you receive such a threat, Akamai's recommendation is always not to pay the ransom as there is no they are guarantees that the attack will come or that payment will avoid the DDOS attack, "explains Richard Meuus, Akamai's Security Technology & Strategy Director.

Already during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, Akamai had deal with over 1,700 attacks of this type by activating to block a massive Ddos attack, the largest mitigated by the company, with a reach of 1.44Tbps. The increase in this type of attack that undermines the interruption of the services offered by a website has also caused concern the FBI who disclosed a sighting informing that unlike the previous attacks, the groups of cyber criminals in action have particular skills Above-average ddos.

Indeed, unlike previous extortionists who often targeted public websites, these cybercriminals repeatedly targeted backend infrastructures, endpoints and DNS servers. This would explain why some of the recent DDOS attacks have resulted in severe and prolonged service interruptions to their victims' websites