Business rivalry is thought to be the root cause of many DDoS attacks, say majority of DDoS victims. Research conducted last year by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International yielded several interesting insights into this mindset. They found that targeted organizations are more likely to blame their rivals for DDoS attacks against them than unknown cybercriminals.
A DDoS attack can significantly hurt a businesses, not only affecting its financial bottom line in the short-term through loss of service, but also stoking distrust in the longer term from customers who see the takedown of service as something to be suspicious of. DDoS attacks are also sometimes used as a smoke screen to distract attention while cybercriminals attack another part of the business.
Kaspersky said that 43% of DDoS victims thought they were targeted by a competitor, as opposed to 38% who suspected cybercriminals. Industrial sabotage was considered to be the most common reason for a DDoS attack worldwide; but their research also showed interesting regional variations. In Asia-Pacific, 56% of victims of DDoS attacks believed they were attacked by a competitor, compared to only 37% in Western Europe.
The research also showed that small businesses are more likely than larger ones to blame a competitor company for a DDoS attack. Almost half (48%) the small businesses surveyed believed that to be the case, compared to 36% of enterprises. The bigger businesses are more likely to believe that former employees or foreign nation states are to blame.
“It is clear that businesses feel their IT systems and private data are under siege from all sides,” says Kirill Ilganaev, head of Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab. “With DDoS attacks becoming so frequent and so crippling, many suspect their competitors are behind them, as they look for ways to put their rivals out of action and steal their customers as a result.”
DDoS attacks have become increasingly easy to launch. DDoS services can be rented out through “booter” portals, in which anyone can hire a hacker’s botnet for any length of time.
Online gambling operations were some of the early motivators behind DDoS attacks. Online gambling houses would launch DDoS attacks against one another, immediately before a sporting event was about to happen. The intention was to take down a rival gambling house’s site so that online gamblers would move their bets elsewhere.
According to research conducted by Akamai, online gaming sites are the number one target of DDoS attacks. They are often targeted more than once, in a trend that Akamai described as DDoS attacks, in which attackers “hammer away at high-value organizations, regardless of effect, looking for a moment when defences might drop.”