Research by cybersecurity company StormWall has found that DDoS attacks in the Asia-Pacific region increased by 174% in the second quarter of 2024 on a year-over-year basis, with South Korea emerging as the top target country.
A breakdown by country shows that South Korea had the highest number of attacks (26%), followed by India (18%) and North Korea (14%), with DDoS activity increasing around local elections. China (12%) and Japan (9%) ranked fourth and fifth respectively.
Hackers hit South Korea particularly hard, which correlates with the country’s legislative elections on April 10, 2024. Historically, India and China have been among the most attacked countries in the region. StormWall says this is because DDoS actors generally concentrate on large economies.
“The fact that we’re now seeing a reversal of this trend shows that the majority of DDoS attacks are politically motivated, launched by activists or APTs that are highly organized and capable,” reads a StormWall statement
Japan saw a significant increase in attacks, rising from 2% in Q1 to 9% in Q2, coinciding with the country hosting the G7 summit in May.
Among sectors, government websites were the hardest hit, accounting for 27% of attacks and experiencing a 116% year-on-year increase in DDoS traffic. Entertainment followed with 18% of attacks and a 134% year-on-year increase, the highest growth among all sectors. The telecommunications sector saw 16% of attacks, largely due to DNS-based attacks targeting the industry’s infrastructure.
Technically, attackers focused on direct-path attacks against government agencies and law enforcement infrastructure. Botnets increased dramatically in size, tripling from 6,000 devices in Q2 2023 to 18,000 in Q2 2024. This growth allowed hackers to launch larger DDoS attacks, with the largest incident mitigated by StormWall peaking at 1.5 Tbit/s, targeting a client in South Korea.
You can read the full report here.
