DDoS attacks were analyzed in a recent report by Gcore. The report reveals a sharp increase of 46% in the number of DDoS attacks compared to the same period in 2023, it is equally alarming that peak attack power measures in terabits per second. 

The total number of attacks during H1 2024 amounted to 830,000, an increase of 46% when compared to H1 2023. UDP floods made up 61% of DDoS attacks, while TCP floods and SYN floods constituted 18% and 11% of the total respectively.

The most-attacked business sectors were gaming (49%), technology (15%), financial services (12%) and telecommunications (10%). The e-commerce (7%) and media and entertainment (5%) industries emerged from the 'Other' category in H1 2024, indicating that they were being targeted more often than in the past.

Attacks on the gaming industry in H1 2024 continued to dominate and rose by 3% over H2 2023. Gcore saw DDoS attacks being used by gamers and gaming groups as a tactic against opponents to derive competitive advantage in tournaments and matches. However, the biggest change over the previous two quarters was in the number of attacks on the technology industry, which more than doubled to 15%. 

In terms of the industries most impacted by network-layer attacks in H1 2024, gaming sat in first position at 47%, technology came in second with 31% of the attacks, and the telecommunications sector was third most-affected with 14%. Among the industries affected by application-layer attacks, financial services were highly targeted with 41% of all attacks, likely because of the sector's low tolerance for disruption and downtime and the monetary gains available to attackers. E-commerce was the second most-affected sector with 28% of application-layer attacks, with media and entertainment third with 13% of the total application-layer attacks.

Read the report.