The State of DDoS Attacks
in APAC in Q3 2023
The StormWall Q3 2023 report on DDoS attacks in the Asia Pacific region examines distributed denial-of-service attack data from our clients across various industries in the region.
With dedicated scrubbing centers in Asia filtering up to 3,500 Gbit/s of traffic during peak times, StormWall processes a significant amount of data.
This puts StormWall in a distinct position to precisely evaluate the DDoS attack landscape. In this report, we highlight the main trends and causes of distributed denial-of-service attacks that took place in APAC in the third quarter of 2023.
An overview of the global trends:
DDoS attacks in APAC
In the third quarter of 2023, we observed a rise in attack volume, greater attack complexity, and a growing reliance on multi-vector attacks.
The main trends that we’ve observed were:
1. Attacks are up by 26% compared to the same quarter last year.
The most significant growth was observed in the Telecom, Ecommerce, and Media sectors.
2. Short, powerful attacks were the most common.
32% fell in the 1 to 10 Gbps range, and 38% of DDoS attacks lasted between 5 and 15 minutes.
These short attacks are hard to detect without automation, but their impact on infrastructure lingers long after they’re over.
3. Threat actors actively employed multi-vector attacks.
These attacks target various components of an infrastructure simultaneously to divert or exhaust the target’s resources, making it easier to exploit vulnerabilities.
4. Hong Kong, South Korea, and India experienced the highest number of attacks overall.
Hactivists also targeted China, Singapore, and Malaysia, where critical infrastructure and government services were hit with increased intensity.
5. DNS attacks have surged compared to Q3 2022.
Because DNS queries often appear legitimate by nature, distinguishing malicious from benign traffic is challenging when the protocol is targeted. We expect to see a further uptick in DNS attacks going into Q4 2023.
6. The ecommerce sector in APAC was the hardest hit this quarter.
It accounted for 37% of all DDoS attacks and saw a 174% year-over-year increase in incidents compared to Q3 2022. Key drivers for this trend were the widespread use of digital loyalty points and the expansion of online shopping in the region.
More information
To read the full report on distributed denial of service – DDOS – attacks impacting the Asia-Pacific in Q3 of 2023:
