Microsoft just distributed reports on various Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that occurred during the last two quarters 2021. Everything sounded rather gloomy: there had been an increase in the number of attacks for 2021, but fortunately, there were protection steps in a place that helped minimize impact. In fact, Azure Ddos Microsoft protection technology was able to intercept one of the biggest DDoS attacks in history.
DDoS attacks are organized efforts to disrupt traffic and service speed, network, or server. It was done by several machines, often infected malware and controlled remotely by attackers. Machines continue to send requests to the target, flood it with unexpected traffic. It often produces servers crashing or slowing significantly.
Blog posts are shared by Microsoft long and talk about various points related to the latest DDoS attack trends. Aside from the fact that these attacks are mostly intercepted, there is no good news to be found in Microsoft’s report. 2021 has become a difficult year in terms of cyber security, and the last two quarters are very bad. The attack is far more frequent and increasing in volume and complexity.
One important point of Microsoft reports talk about one of the largest DDoS attacks ever been entitled. The attack took place on November 2021 and targeted Azure anonymous customers located in Asia. It lasted fifteen minutes, and during that time, a large number of exploited machines simultaneously sent packages to targeted Azure customers.
This unprecedented attack has a 3.47tbps throughput with a package rate of 340 million packages per second. It involves more than 10,000 sources, with packages sent from all over the world, including China, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Russia, Iran, South Korea and Taiwan. Microsoft believes that this is the biggest attack ever reported. This is not the only DDoS effort which was intercepted by Azure in 2021.
In December, Microsoft also mitigated two more attacks targeting Asian customers. One attack has a 3.25tbps throughput and lasts more than 15 minutes, while the other closes at 2.55tbps and is only more than five minutes.
Microsoft noted that in 2021, the gaming industry suffered the worst DDoS attacks were intercepted by Azure. Even with protection steps, many gamers experience service rejection, including for games such as Titanfall, die by daytime, and various snowstorm games. The attack also stretches to the Voice Over IP (VOIP) industry, causing various blackouts.
Usually, the worst months for DDoS attacks are near the end of the year. Cloudflare also experienced a similar uptick in DDo’s efforts around that time. However, for Microsoft, the worst month was August 2021, when the number of attacks in one day reached a new high of 4,296. This is a massive increase over the average Microsoft 1,955 attack per day.
The second half of 2021 saw the worst DDoS attack this year. Microsoft saw an increase of up to 43% compared to the first two quarters of this year. Added, the company relieved 359,713 attacks during the third and fourth quarters of 2021. Microsoft reported that most attacks targeted the United States (54 percent.) India was also beaten badly and saw a massive increase, from only 2% in the first half of 2021 to 23 % in the second half. Other destinations include East Asia, Europe, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world.
Microsoft claims that the increase in DDOS attacks comes from the fact that they are easily accessible through services for rent. Microsoft also suggested that most attacks intended for systems working with them were thwarted through the Azure DDoS protection service.