Before the start of the academic year, the number of DDoS attacks on online retail has increased
Before the start of the new academic year, StormWall specialists have identified a sharp increase in DDoS attacks on the e-commerce sector in August 2021. Online retail is traditionally one of the most attacked industries, and during the preparation for school, the number of attacks on online stores increases significantly. With the help of cyberattacks, online retailers are trying to harm their competitors and cripple their websites. Experts have found that the number of DDoS attacks on online stores increased by 62% in August 2021 compared to August 2020. Data from StormWall customers was used for the study.
As the study shows, most attacks in August this year targeted online clothing and footwear stores (41%) and online electronics stores (35%), as well as online stores for office supplies (5%), sporting goods (11%), furniture (4%), household goods (3%) and others (1%).
Experts were also able to analyze the type of DDoS attacks that hit e-commerce this year. Experts have found that the average attack performance is 50-200 thousand HTTP requests per second, and the maximum recorded performance for online stores was about 600 Gbps. Although hackers already know how to launch DDoS attacks with a capacity of up to 2 Tbit/s, even a much smaller attack can cause great damage, as such an attack can stop the work of the site for several hours. Most of the DDoS attacks on e-commerce in August 2021 were carried out via HTTP protocol (93%), some of the attacks were carried out via TCP protocol (5%), and there were also attacks via UDP protocol (2%).
“Every year it becomes more and more difficult for online retailers to defend against DDoS attacks. Now you can buy a botnet on the Internet that allows you to organize an attack with a capacity of up to 2 Tbit/s, and the online retailer is not able to defend against it independently. During the school preparation period, competition in the e-commerce market is significantly increased, and every online retailer should be prepared for a possible DDoS attack from the competition. Most businesses already use professional protection, but its effectiveness can vary. It is recommended to perform stress tests of your resources at regular intervals to check if the protection is working effectively,” says Ramil Khantimirov, CEO and co-founder of StormWall.
