Mobile apps now used for deadlier DDoS cyberattacks

Published January 21, 2014 3:39pm

Website administrators may have to brace for deadlier distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from cybercriminals, who have learned to exploit mobile phones and tablets to launch such attacks.

Prolexic Technologies, an anti-DDoS company, said this was one of the major findings in its report for the fourth quarter of 2013.

"Malicious actors now carry a powerful attack tool in the palm of their hands, which requires minimal skill to use. Because it is so easy for mobile device users to opt-in to DDoS attack campaigns, we expect to see a considerable increase in the use of these attack tools in 2014," said Prolexic president Stuart Scholly.

He added the danger also lies in the prevalence of mobile devices plus the "widespread availability of downloadable apps that can be used for DDoS."

Worse, he said mobile devices have an added layer of complexity since mobile networks use super proxies.

This means website owners cannot simply use a hardware appliance to block source IP addresses, since it will also block legitimate traffic.

"Effective DDoS mitigation requires an additional level of fingerprinting and human expertise so specific blocking signatures can be developed on-the-fly and applied in real-time," he said.

The firm said the data it gathered in the fourth quarter of 2013 showed mobile devices were part of a DDoS attack campaign against a global financial services firm.

In the attacks, the firm detected the use of a tool called AnDOSid, which runs on Google's Android and performs an HTTP POST flood attack.

Scholly also said that with mobile apps, "malicious actors can choose to proactively participate in orchestrated DDoS attack campaigns."

"When you consider how many mobiles device users there are in the world, this presents a significant DDoS threat," he said.

New record

Prolexic said the number of attacks against its clients in the last quarter of 2013 set a new record for one quarter, showing the "heightened level of DDoS activity throughout 2013."

"Compared to the same quarter one year ago, total attack volume increased 26 percent. A week-by-week comparison to Q4 2012 shows increases in attack volume across eight of the 12 weeks of the quarter," the firm said.

The firm also said the largest DDoS attack it mitigated in the fourth quarter peaked at 179 Gbps, the largest DDoS attack it faced to date.

But it also said attack sizes continue to grow and for this quarter, Prolexic mitigated several attacks over 100 Gbps.

Trends

Scholly said they found significant DDoS trends in 2013, including:

emergence of Layer 7 toolkits
rise in DDoS-for-hire services
resurrection of amplified Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DrDoS) attacks as a common and powerful attack vector
steady rise in the number of DDoS attacks originating from Asian countries.

— TJD, GMA News

Tags: mobilephones, smartphones, ddos, cybercrime, hacking