Report: DDoS Attacks On the Rise in 2011

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are on the rise, according to a report released by Trustwave this week.

The company’s semi-annual Web Hacking Incident Database (WHID) report found the attacks jumped 22 percent from the first half of 2010, overtaking methods such as SQL injections and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. DDoS attacks occupied 32% of attacks while SQL injection and XSS attacks took up 21% and 9% respectively.

In distributed denial-of-service attacks, groups of Internet connected computers force another system or systems offline by deluging it with traffic. The attacks are commonly used to knock Web servers and other high profile assets offline, for example in the recent attacks by the online mischief making group Anonymous. 

Unlike other reports, Trustwave’s focuses on legitimate incidents and deemphasizes vulnerabilities, which may partly explain XSS attacks taking a backseat to DoS attacks. The year’s biggest DDoS attacks have ultimately figured into these stats as well, as the controversial Wikileaks attacks had a lion’s share of headlines in 2010.

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