Military contractors facing new attack campaign

Powerful distributed denial-of-service attacks have become increasingly prevalent as a result of growing geopolitical tensions, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. More than 6 million DDoS attacks have been launched during the first half of 2022, which was similar to the second half of 2021, but such attacks had a 57% higher total bandwidth, with most intrusions associated with either the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, and between China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, a report from NETSCOUT revealed. The findings showed that DDoS attacks became more prevalent in Ireland, Norway, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Italy, and Belize, as well as Taiwan and India. While most DDoS attacks have been launched as diversionary efforts, they have been increasingly leveraged for disrupting operations and communications, as well as morale degradation and smokescreen purposes, according to NETSCOUT Senior Manager of Threat Intelligence Richard Hummel. "While a large number of DDoS attacks are motivated by monetary gain, the number of attacks for other reasons continue to grow. For example, North America saw Elementary Education hit hard with very simple single vector attacks," added Hummel.