Prolexic Infographic Explains the How and Why of Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DrDoS) Attacks

Prolexic Technologies, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, today released a new infographic that provides an overview of Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DrDoS) attacks, an increasing cyber threat. The infographic can be viewed and downloaded at www.prolexic.com/reflection.

According to Prolexic's Q3 2013 Global DDoS Attack Report, the use of reflection attacks is increasing rapidly. Based on data gathered from attacks against Prolexic's global client base, reflection attacks increased 265 percent over Q3 2012 and 70 percent over Q2 2013. This can be explained by the increase in misconfigured servers worldwide and the ease with which perpetrators can now obtain lists of IP addresses and misconfigured servers from underground Internet communities. In addition, DrDoS attacks provide the benefits of obscuring the source of the attack (providing anonymity), while enabling the bandwidth of intermediary victims to be used, often unknowingly, to multiply the size of the attack (amplification).

"Reflection attacks need to be on everyone's radar," said Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic. "Our goal in developing this infographic was to simplify this somewhat complex subject matter and raise awareness of reflection attacks so IT and security communities can take proactive action."

The infographic explains how DrDoS attacks impact both intermediaries (victims) and websites (targets), as well as why this attack type is gaining popularity. It also identifies six industries where DrDoS attacks have been most commonly used and offers recommendations that organizations can take to reduce their risk. Prolexic's latest infographic can be viewed and downloaded at www.prolexic.com/reflection.

The Prolexic Security Engineering and Response Team (PLXsert) has also published a series of white papers that analyze reflection and amplification DDoS attacks. The four types of DrDoS attacks covered are:

DNS

SNMP/NTP/CHARGEN

SYN

Gaming server attacks

The white paper series details real-world case studies of DrDoS attacks observed by PLXsert through the Prolexic global DDoS mitigation network and can be downloaded at www.prolexic.com/drdos.

About Prolexic

Prolexic is the world's largest, most trusted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation provider. Able to absorb the largest and most complex attacks ever launched, Prolexic restores mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global enterprises and government agencies within minutes. Ten of the world's largest banks and the leading companies in e-Commerce, SaaS, payment processing, travel/hospitality, gaming, energy and other at-risk industries rely on Prolexic to protect their businesses. Founded in 2003 as the world's first in-the-cloud DDoS mitigation platform, Prolexic is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida, and has scrubbing centers located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. To learn more about how Prolexic can stop DDoS attacks and protect your business, please visit www.prolexic.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and @Prolexic on Twitter.