By the end of the year, telecom operators became the most frequent victims of hackers – Kommersant

Kommersant got acquainted with the research of the Garda group of companies on changes in the landscape and features of DDoS attacks (based on the “denial of service” model) in the third quarter of 2023. Compared to the second quarter of the year, the share of TCP SYN floods, that is, application-level attacks, increased significantly in the third quarter—it reached 60% of the total number of DDoS attacks.

“Attackers are increasingly launching attacks that are more difficult to counter: using application-level protocols and encrypted traffic. The spread of this practice indicates its success and the attackers’ achievement of their goals,” the researchers state.

The largest volume of DDoS attacks in Russia in the third quarter of 2023 was registered on the networks of telecom operators, Garda points out. This can be explained by the fact that operators are intensively fighting DDoS attacks, protecting both their own facilities and the resources of their clients located on the same network infrastructure. In second place is the sector of transport and transportation. This segment has always been of interest to attackers. In the third quarter, there were also noticeable indicators of attacks on the resources of air carriers and airline ticket booking systems; the resources of railway carriers also came under attack. In third place are public sector resources: high indicators are noted in the fuel and energy complex and industry, which may indicate an attempt to influence a critical sector of the economy. Sixth and seventh places are occupied by the IT and financial sectors, which are traditional targets for hackers.

In the ranking of countries from which attacks are carried out, the leader, as in previous quarters, is China (46.45%). India increased its figures (30.41% against 24.78% previously), while South Korea, which holds third place, had 3.5%. The USA, Taiwan and Russia showed a decrease in indicators, but the Netherlands (from 1.08% to 1.53%) and Bolivia (from 0.89% to 1.46%) unexpectedly showed an increase.

Read more about the data protection market in the material “Cybersecurity has increased its forecast”.

Tatiana Isakova