Cyber security company Kaspersky announced that the number of DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2022 was 4.5 higher than that of the first quarter of 2021. The company stated that the main reason behind this increase is the war between Ukraine and Russia. The situation became an opportunity for cybercriminal groups to launch attacks, while some of them were not even originating from the countries in conflict.
Q1 2022 results
According to the data compiled by Kaspersky, in the first quarter of 2022, the company’s DDoS Intelligence system detected 91,052 DDoS attacks. 44.34% of these attacks were directed at targets located in the USA. The most popular day for launching DDoS attacks was Sunday, with 16.35%. 94.95% of the attacks lasted less than 4 hours. The longest attack continued for 549 hours.
According to the report, 53.64% of attacks were UDP floods. During the first two months of 2022, the company noticed an average of 1,406 attacks per day. The busiest day was January 19th with 2,250 DDoS in a single day. Since the end of February, the average number of attacks per day has decreased to 697 during March. Alexander Gutnikov, Security Expert of Kaspersky said,
« In Q1 2022 we witnessed an all-time high number of DDoS attacks. The upward trend was largely affected by the geopolitical situation. What is quite unusual is the long duration of the DDoS attacks, which are usually executed for immediate profit.
Some of the attacks we observed lasted for days and even weeks, suggesting that they might have been conducted by ideologically motivated cyberactivists. We’ve also seen that many organizations were more aware of how extensive and dangerous DDoS attacks can be. They also remind us that organizations need to be prepared against such attacks. »