Attackers increasingly abuse insecure routers and other home devices for DDoS attacks

Attackers are taking advantage of home routers and other devices that respond to UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) requests over the Internet in order to amplify distributed denial-of-service attacks. A report released Aug 18 by cloud services provider Akamai Technologies shows that the number of DDoS attacks is on the rise. During the second quarter of 2015 it increased by 7 percent compared to the previous three months and by 132 percent compared to the same period in 2014, the company's data revealed.

Overall, attackers launched less powerful attacks, but their duration was longer. Even so, the company saw 12 attacks that exceeded 100Gbps during the second quarter and five that peaked at more than 50 million packets per second. Very few organizations have the infrastructure necessary to deal with such attacks on their own. The largest one recorded during the second quarter across Akamai's Prolexic Routed network peaked at 214Mpps and was capable of disrupting high-end routers used by ISPs, the company said. SYN floods and Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) reflection were the most popular DDoS vectors used, accounting for 16 percent and 15.8 percent of attacks respectively.