Findings from MazeBolt’s Monthly Worldwide List of DDoS Attacks
Telcos Badly Hit by DDoS
In September 2020, DDoS attackers targeted more than a dozen Telcos across Europe, crippling their DNS infrastructure. The DDoS attacks, which went on for over 24 hours, were mitigated, but their effects have caused widescale outages and connectivity challenges.
These attacks followed in the footsteps of the massive attack on Telstra last month, which caused the internet to go down for Telstra’s customers as the domain name server (DNS) overwhelmed the company’s network infrastructure.
In a separate incident in September, Iceland country’s main telecommunications and co-location hosting services were also DDosed, causing disruption. The media reports that the attack led to a feeling of ‘uncertainty’ for the first time in history about telecom services in Iceland.
The disruptions caused by the surge in DDoS attacks have left many of the affected countries still reeling under the effect. Here is another DDoS attack example, SwissSign from Switzerland lost a key customer as email provider ProtonMail moved over to Let’s Encrypt amid the disruption. In France, when SFR and Bouygues Telecom were attacked, media reports claim that internet services were affected, with 1000s reporting breakdowns and unusual delays in connecting to websites throughout France.
Online Education Suffers DDoS Attacks
There has also been a surge in attacks on educational institutions this month. According to new research by Kaspersky, DDoS attacks against online educational resources were over three times more prevalent in 2020 than they were last year. Impacted platforms included Moodle, Zoom, edX, Coursera, Google Meet, Google Classroom, and Blackboard.
This month specifically, online instruction at Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida was disrupted by distributed denial-of-service attacks. On Sept. 2, Miami-Dade schools canceled online classes for 200,000 students due to a series of DDoS attacks.
In another incident this month, students and teachers in Pickens County were unable to log in to any district portals due to a DDoS attack. 16,300 students from the Pickens County School District, which is South Carolina’s fifteenth largest district, were left staring at `Error 404’ on their screens for over two hours till the attack was mitigated.
DDoS attacks on educational institutions cause significant operational disruption denying students and staff access to critical materials.
Here is the list of worldwide DDoS attacks that took place between September 2020 and August 2020.
https://blog.mazebolt.com/list-of-ddos-attaks-november-2020
About MazeBolt
Israel-based MazeBolt is an innovation leader in cybersecurity with over two decades of experience in pioneering DDoS protection solutions. The company’s new flagship product, RADAR™, is a patented, new technology. It offers DDoS protection through automated DDoS simulations on live production with zero downtime. Working in conjunction with any mitigation solution installed. Its unique capabilities have ensured business continuity and full DDoS security posture for enterprises worldwide, including Fortune 1000 & NASDAQ-listed companies.
References
- https://www.ciodive.com/news/outages-ddos-attacks-internet-infrastructure-CenturyLink/584720/
- https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ddos-attacks-on-virtual-education/
- https://www.intelligentcio.com/me/2020/09/15/ddos-attacks-against-educational-resources-increased-by-more-than-350-says-kaspersky/
- https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/cyber-incidents-disrupt-more-schools-a-14961
