Computer Security 2016 Predictions for Highly Advanced DDoS Attacks are...

2016 Predictions for Highly Advanced DDoS Attacks are Imminent

new advanced ddos attacks imminent for 2016As we inch closer to celebrating New Years to usher in 2016, our predictions for the type of malware threats that we will see prevail for the New Year seem to come closer to fruition as IBM's staff reveals their insights to new types of DDoS attacks.

DDoS attacks, aptly known as Distributed Denial of Service attacks, are known for instances where online cybercrooks take aim at a particular website to bring it down through an abundant amount of traffic fed through to it or seeking out a vulnerability to compromise the site's server. IBM, the technology giant we know to be the International Business Machines Corporation, had some of its staff provide various insights into new types of DDoS attacks that are ramping up for attacks for the year 2016.

Among IBM's predictions in their recent insights relayed by various staff members, new types of DDoS attacks are confirmed to be emerging and should be prevalent during 2016. Among the new types of DDoS attacks, IBM foresees BitTorrent networks as a platform that malicious outfits utilize to launch DRDoS (Distributed Reflective Denial of Service) attacks, which are amplified with their attacks by as much as 120 times over commonly known DDoS attacks.

Apart from the BitTorrent abuse, it was discovered that new types of DDoS attacks that will continue into 2016 are using malicious JavaScript to trigger the attack. First noticed in April of 2015, IBM staff alleges that this type of attack utilizes a technique of hijacking a site's traffic to trigger unwanted activity on another site. However, the use of JavaScript in DDoS attacks proved to be more capable and embedded code in Imgur images loaded on Reddit to secretly load hundreds of additional 4chan images hidden inside iFrames. The power of such an attack is more than enough to bring down the average to small-sized web server. Again, quite an effective approach to bring a relatively large site down.

The last type of new DDoS attack verified by IBM staff that we should see emerge in 2016 is one that requires attackers to properly synchronize network packets to arrive at a target server at the same time. This type of DDoS attack is dubbed to be a Temporal Lensing DDoS attack, one that requires the finding of protocols that support amplification factors, so they don't need for time to sync millions of packets per attack. The Temporal Lensing DDoS attack type is the newest type showing up first in May of 2015. Additionally, this DDoS attack is highly effective at crippling a web server. So much, that the Temporal Lensing DDoS attack can be combined with amplification methods, which initially only requires low bandwidth traffic. Details of the Temporal Lensing DDoS attack and how it works can be found in a UC Berkeley paper published on the ICSI Networking and Security Group page.

With the news of new DDoS attack types emerging, it further supports our previous predictions made for what we will expect in 2016 for evolving malware attacks followed up with less hacktivism. As we make progress with our research and verified predictions for what is to come in the 2016 New Year, we will be sure to steadily report them.

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