Microsoft Azure Warns on Killnet's Growing DDoS Onslaught Against Healthcare

The pro-Russian hacktivist group KillNet, which launches its campaigns against countries supporting Ukraine, is ramping up its daily distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against healthcare organizations.

Microsoft's Azure Network Security has released an overview of the group's attack patterns based off recent campaigns and found that the number of daily DDoS attacks, known as a type of cyberattack that can slow down systems by sending too many connection requests to a server, used against Azure healthcare organizations went up to 40-60 attacks in February, compared with 10-20 daily attacks last November. 

The victim organizations of the attacks ranged from pharmaceutical companies to hospitals to health insurance and health services, according to the brief, which included data on how organizations can protect themselves and customers moving forward: "Enable DDoS network protection, design your application with DDoS best practices in mind, ensure it's protected before an attack occurs, create a DDoS response plan, reach out for help during an attack, and learn and adapt after an attack."

Though KillNet's attacks haven't done much to significantly disrupt any of the organizations that have been targeted so far, there's potential for the group to become more dangerous. The group's focus on critical infrastructure makes it essential that organizations take the steps necessary to protect themselves from future DDoS campaigns, Azure warned.