Cyberattacks in the first half of 2023 were analyzed in a recent report by Radware. According to the report, the number of malicious web application transactions increased by 500% compared to the first half of 2022, while the total number of DDoS events decreased 33%.

According to attacks claimed by hacktivists on Telegram, politically motivated and religious groups waged multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns during the first half of 2023. Most of the hacktivist claimed DDoS attacks targeted India (674 attacks), followed by the United States (507 attacks), Israel (459 attacks), Ukraine (376 attacks) and Poland (297 attacks). Government (1112 attacks), business/economy (1036 attacks) and travel (628) websites faced the most hacktivists attacks, followed by financial services (420 attacks) and health/medicine (329 attacks).

Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) shouldered the largest number of the DDoS attacks, blocking 66% of the attacks and facing 48% of the attack volume. The Americas blocked 25% of the DDoS attacks. While the Americas blocked a smaller share of attacks compared to EMEA, the Americas experienced a threat level on par with EMEA bearing nearly equal attack volumes (47%). The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region blocked 9% of the DDoS events and faced 5% of the global attack volume.

The report revealed that research and education bore almost a third (32%) of the DDoS attack volume, while service providers and technology accounted for 20% and 12%, respectively. On a regional basis, however, the distribution of DDoS attack volume varied. 

• In the Americas, service providers (39%) and research and education (38%) drew the majority of the DDoS attack volume, followed by healthcare (7%) and energy (6%). 
• In EMEA, technology (32%) experienced the biggest share of the DDoS attack volume, followed by gaming (15%) and telecom (15%). 
• In APAC, service providers (50%) bore the brunt of the DDoS attack volume, followed by retail (21%), gaming (9%) and transportation and logistics (6%).

Read the full report here.