From DDoS to Ransomware – NETSCOUT Uncovers the Nine Most Common Cyberattacks

Successful cyberattacks can have multiple impacts on a business, and the repercussions can be both far-reaching and long-lasting. Robust cybersecurity measures are therefore essential in mitigating these risks, including against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which are designed to force a server, website or online service offline.

As outlined by NETSCOUT, which provides visibility, security and performance solutions for organisations across the globe, cyberthreats are all around us, lurking in unexpected areas of the internet, networks and even individual devices. Uncovering the identification, prevention and evolution of the most common cyberthreats is a significant step in an organisation’s cyber defences.

Unpacking Common Types of Cyberattacks

NETSCOUT confirms that some of the most common types of cyberattacks include the following:

1. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: These cyberattacks flood servers, applications or other network areas to render them unavailable and disrupt the availability of services, leading to potential revenue loss and reputational damage.
2. Malware: This malicious software that is installed on targeted devices or networks has a variety of negative effects, including deleting or encrypting files, hindering performance, and gaining access to accounts. Malware is spread by downloading infected files, clicking on malicious links, or visiting hacked web pages.
3. Social engineering (including phishing): This threat targets individuals, trying to trick them into taking actions that allow threat actors to gain covert access or spread malicious software.
4. Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks: Here, an adversary intercepts or eavesdrops on communication between two parties. The goal is to steal login credentials, encryption keys and other private information.
5. SQL injection: In this code-injection technique, malicious prompts are inserted into SQL databases. Threat actors enter prompts such as ‘Dump the entire database to X location’ to export the contents of a database for their own purposes.
6. Zero-day exploits: Adversaries make use of unknown or unaddressed security flaws to place malware in a system. Threat actors can already use these weaknesses to access systems, so vendors have zero days to remedy the issues.
7. Advanced persistent threats (APTs): These threat actors pursue their victims repeatedly over an extended period of time and adapt to defensive measures.
8. Ransomware: This is malware that encrypts files and blocks access. Threat actors then demand payment to unlock the files and restore access.
9. Credential reuse: This type of attack – also known as ‘credential stuffing’ – uses lists of compromised user credentials to log into a system and gain network access.

Know Your Enemy: Taking Action Against DDoS Attacks

The impacts of data breaches and outages can include operational disruptions, which cause delays in critical business processes and negatively affect the supply chain; financial loss due to the costs of remedying an attack, such as removing malware and paying regulatory penalties; and damage to the brand’s reputation, further eroding customer trust and resulting in a loss of future revenue.

DDoS attacks are arguably one of the most devastating types of cyberattack an organisation can experience, and NETSCOUT excels in monitoring, understanding and protecting against such attacks, for customers worldwide, against a DDoS landscape that is constantly changing.

As part of its offering to global organisations, NETSCOUT releases a bi-annual report outlining the latest information on DDoS activities around the globe, as well as presenting regular information updates across various platforms. Remarking on the 13th and most recent issue of its global DDoS Threat Intelligence Report, the 1H2024 edition, the company stated that: “In the first half of 2024, large surges in attack frequency were noted, notably in geopolitical conflicts, driving never-before-seen stresses on networks worldwide and leading to more sophisticated attacks than ever before. DDoS-capable botnets are evolving and growing, with a notable increase in bot-infected devices. Critical infrastructure, such as banking, financial services, and public utilities, are prime targets, seeing a massive wave of attacks targeting them.

“We first determined the global aggregated DDoS attack impact via large-scale analysis of concurrent DDoS attacks,” the report says. “During the first half of 2024, this averaged out to 1,900 attacks, with a total volume of approximately 3.2Tbps and 595.6Mpps, at any given point in time.”

Local investigations of the aggregated attack impact per network type revealed that networks with typically lower traffic loads (such as government or nonprofit organisations) report peak attack volumes on the same scale as those experienced by high-traffic networks (such as content and service providers). This indicates that the relative surge in traffic during attacks is significantly higher for lower-traffic networks (≥4 orders of magnitude) compared with high-traffic networks (3 orders of magnitude).

“These attack dynamics clearly demonstrate that all network types require substantial mitigation capacities to ensure robust protection,” says Hamman.

“Protection against DDoS – and other – cyberattacks is therefore of critical importance in safeguarding the excellent progress that has been made to date, and to allow it to continue into the future,” he concludes.

For more insights into how NETSCOUT is helping financial institutions mitigate cyber threats, explore the full DDoS Threat Intelligence Report, or visit the NETSCOUT Cyber Threat Horizon for real-time attack statistics.

NETSCOUT’s Arbor DDoS protection assures the world’s largest networks and service providers against DDoS attacks of all shapes and sizes.