Cloudflare, Inc., the security, performance, and reliability company, has released its Q1 2024 DDoS threat report, revealing a 50% surge in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
The first quarter of 2024 saw Cloudflare’s defense systems mitigate 4.5 million DDoS attacks – a 50% year-over-year increase. Notably, DNS-based DDoS attacks surged 80% YoY, solidifying their position as the most dominant attack vector.
Sweden experienced a 466% increase in DDoS attacks following its acceptance into NATO, echoing the trend observed during Finland’s NATO accession in 2023.
The company revealed that DNS-based DDoS attacks have become the most prominent attack vector and its share among all network-layer attacks continues to grow. In the first quarter of 2024, the share of DNS-based DDoS attacks increased by 80% YoY, growing to approximately 54%.
Despite the surge in DNS attacks and due to the overall increase in all types of DDoS attacks, the share of each attack type, remarkably, remains the same as seen in our previous report for the final quarter of 2023. HTTP DDoS attacks remain at 37% of all DDoS attacks, DNS DDoS attacks at 33%, and the remaining 30% is left for all other types of L3/4 attacks, such as SYN Flood and UDP Floods.
In termas of industries targeted, the company revealed that the top attacked industry by HTTP DDoS attacks in North America was Marketing and Advertising.
In Africa and Europe, the Information Technology and Internet industry was the most attacked. In the Middle East, the most attacked industry was Computer Software. In Asia, the most attacked industry was Gaming and Gambling. In South America, it was the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry. Last but not least, in Oceania, was the Telecommunications industry.
Globally, the Gaming and Gambling industry was the number one most targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks. Just over seven of every 100 DDoS requests that Cloudflare mitigated were aimed at the Gaming and Gambling industry. In second place, the Information Technology and Internet industry, and in third, Marketing and Advertising.
In Q1 2024, the United States was the largest source of HTTP DDoS attack traffic, as a fifth of all DDoS attack requests originated from US IP addresses. China came in second, followed by Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Singapore, India, and Argentina.
When analyzing DDoS attacks against our customers, Cloudflare uses their billing country to determine the “attacked country (or region)”. In the first quarter of 2024, the US was the most attacked by HTTP DDoS attacks. Approximately one out of every 10 DDoS requests that Cloudflare mitigated targeted the US. In second, China, followed by Canada, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cyprus, and Germany.
