DDoS Threat Report 2019 Q2

DNS amplification attacks swelled in Q2 2019, with the amplified attacks spiking more than 1,000% compared with Q2 2018. Nexusguard researchers attributed Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) with fueling the new wave of DNS amplification attacks, which accounted for more than 65% of the attacks last quarter.

• Multiple government domains (as well as paypal.com) fell victim to rampant DNS abuses, likely due to many of these domains deploying DNSSEC to the top-level .gov domain.
• “Bit and Piece” Attacks continued to spread this quarter, adopted for attacks across Europe, North America and Africa.
• Mobile devices also continued to contribute to DDoS attacks, which primarily originated from iOS mobile devices in addition to botnet-hijacked Windows machines.