The correlation between DDoS attacks and cryptomining

There is a direct correlation between cryptocurrency and DDoS attacks. As the price of cryptocurrency dropped in 2018, leading to decreased profits from cryptomining, hackers on the black market began to divert prime botnet resources to DDoS attack activities, which increased month by month.

DDoS attacks in 2018

In NSFOCUS’ 2018 DDoS Attack Landscape report, NSFOCUS analyzed the threat landscape after a landmark year of technological growth related to cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Industry 4.0.

Key findings include:

• Attackers were more inclined to launch DDoS attacks when the short-term benefits from cryptomining activities declined in 2018.
• In 2018, DDoS attacks kept expanding in size as DDoS-as-a-Service experienced a fast growth.
• Of all internet attack types, 25% of attackers were recidivists responsible for 40% of all attack events. The proportion of recidivists in DDoS attacks decreased in 2018, making up about 7% of DDoS attackers that launched 12% of attack events.
• Cloud services/IDCs, gaming, and e-commerce were the top three industries targeted by attackers.
• The total number of DDoS attacks in 2018 reached 148,000, down 28.4% from 2017, driven by effective protections against reflection attacks, which decreased considerably.
• In 2018, the most frequently seen attacks were SYN flood, UDP flood, ACK flood, HTTP flood, and HTTPS flood attacks, which all together accounted for 96% of all DDoS attacks.
• Of all DDoS attacks, 13% used a combination of multiple attack methods. The other 87% were single-vector attacks.

“The fluctuation of Bitcoin prices has a direct bearing on DDoS attack traffic,” said Richard Zhao, COO at NSFOCUS.

“This, along with other report findings, can help us better predict and prepare for DDoS attacks. Attackers are after profits and as we watch bitcoin fluctuate, we will continue to see this correlation pop up. DDoS attacks have never stopped since making their debut – analyzing trends in this report helps companies keep up with the fluid attack and threat landscape.”