DDoS Attacks Up 22 Percent In Second Half Of 2010, Study Says

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have become the top vector for attacking websites, according to a report released today.

DDoS attacks jumped to the No. 1 attack vector, up 22 percent over the first half of 2010, according to Trustwave's second-half 2010 Web Hacking Incident Report.

"Based on our report, website downtime is far from the traditional intended outcome of a [DDoS] attack, which is typically hacking for profit," the report says. "As a result, most businesses were not equipped to handle such an attack because they had not tested, nor properly implemented, anti-automation defenses for their Web application architecture.

"Our study found that most businesses wrongly assume that network hardware will stop DDoS attacks, or believe their website will not be targeted by such attacks," the report continues. "But the increase in this attack vector proves that businesses, both large and small, should test their website limitations to better understand how their applications will respond to such an attack."

Attacks against government agencies resulted in defacement in 26 percent of attacks, while the finance sector experienced monetary loss in 64 percent of attacks. Retail was most affected by credit card leakage (27 percent).

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