The ferocity of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks has been increasing over the years, with one attack finally breaking 100Gbps in 2010. This finding comes from Arbor Networks in its most recent Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report here, which also notes that DDoS attacks have increased by 1000 percent since 2005. Arbor Networks obtained its data from surveying more than 110 self-classified Tier 1 and Tier 2 IP network operators from around the world.

There are obviously many factors that lead to a DDoS attack, which you can read about in the report. What I found interesting though, is how attackers are shifting away from blunt-force methods, where web servers are repeatedly hammered with fake visits. Instead, they are taking to the exploitation of specific network weaknesses or weak spots that require fewer resources to knock off the Net. Specifically, misconfigured DNS servers are a target, as well as web portals and certain classes of network appliances.

For example, the use of a SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall or IDS (intrusion detection system) in front of a web server actually serves to create a weak chink in one's armor; half of those surveyed admitted to a firewall or IPS outage in the wake of a DDoS. In the report, Arbor noted that "These devices can render networks more susceptible to attacks as the state tables on even the most scalable versions available can be overwhelmed with a moderate size DDoS attack."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at PC World

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