DDoS ransom attacks, a type of computer attack, increased 29% for the year and 175% for the fourth quarter.

Those are the findings of the DDoS Attack Trends for Q4 2021 report. Published by web infrastructure and CDN provider Cloudflare, it analyzes DDoS attack trends.

For the fourth consecutive time this year, China topped the rankings.

The majority of attacks come from networks in the country.

DDoS and ransomware

A DDoS attack can disrupt, partially or totally, user access to a service or equipment. To do this, hackers overload a server's bandwidth and ruin a system's resources through multiple requests. Once a system is taken down by the attack, attackers can gain access to company or user resources.

By DDoS we must understand “denial of service attacks” (Distributed Denial of Service attack). Be careful not to confuse ransomware DDoS attacks with ransomware attacks. Using ransomware, a hacker encrypts a victim's systems and holds their data hostage unless they pay a ransom. A ransom DDoS attack occurs when a threat actor attempts to extort money from a victim by threatening them with a DDoS attack. The common point is their effect: the blocking of an entire system.

According to Cloudflare's report, in December nearly a third of respondents said they had been targeted by a DDoS actor demanding a ransom.

Note, in the event of a ransomware attack, the only way to recover stolen data is to pay.

In the case of a DDoS, the attack is more easily circumvented.

A critical month of December

According to Cloudfare, the fourth quarter of 2021 was the busiest for hackers.

In December 2021 alone, there were more attacks than in the first and second quarters combined.

In the same month, one in three respondents said they had been targeted by a ransom DDoS attack or threatened by an attacker.

Attacks against manufacturing companies increased by 641% in the last quarter.

The services and gambling industries were the second and third most targeted industries for application-level DDoS attacks.

A development to watch

Recently, DDoS attacks have started to work hand in hand with ransomware attacks.

This alliance allows them to combine service blocking, file encryption and data theft.

Faced with a more dangerous and convincing threat, the victim has more pressure and is therefore more likely to pay.

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