Yet another report is out showing that yes indeed distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are on a rampage.

Geopolitical unrest and the rise of ideologically motivated hacktivist groups fueled a massive onslaught of disruptive DDoS attacks in the second half of 2023, according to Netscout's latest threat intelligence report. The cybersecurity firm detected over 7 million DDoS attacks globally from July through December, a 15% spike compared to the first six months of the year. The report also underscored a shocking rise in DNS water torture attacks.

Top findings in the report

• 15% increase in DDoS attacks in second half of 2023 vs the first half 2023, totaling over 7 million attacks
• 10x rise in daily hacktivist DDoS attacks between the first half and second half of 2023
• 553% increase in DNS water torture attacks from the first half to the second half of 2023
• Over 120,000 DDoS attacks targeted gaming and gambling enterprises in 2023
• Hacktivist group NoName057(16) topped list, attacking 780 websites across 35 countries

“The biggest surprise to me was the sheer number of scale of hacktivists contributing to attacks around the world,” Richard Hummel, senior threat intelligence Manager at Netscout, told SDxCentral.

Hummel noted that in the second half of 2023 alone, more than 280 adversaries claimed credit for attacks on over 4,600 websites across over130 industries in more than 100 different countries.

“This scale is mind-boggling when, in times past, it would be an exception to have more than three major hacktivist groups launching DDoS attack campaigns at the same time,” he said.

Hacktivism explodes across borders The report highlights how DDoS attacks driven by hacktivism transcended geographic boundaries over the past year, reflecting a major shift in the global cyber threat landscape.

Prominent groups like NoName057(16) and Anonymous Sudan increasingly wielded DDoS attacks to target websites, infrastructure and organizations opposed to their ideological aims and political stances.

In one high-profile example, the Anonymous Sudan hacker collective launched DDoS strikes against Twitter (now X) in an attempt to influence Elon Musk regarding Starlink internet access in Sudan. The group also attacked the Telegram messaging platform after its main channel was suspended.

“NoName057(16), Anonymous Sudan, and Killnet have taken credit for DDoS attacks in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Palestine targeting communications infrastructure, hospitals, and banks,” the report states.

Overall, daily DDoS attacks from hacktivist groups skyrocketed more than 10-fold between the first and second halves of 2023.

Tsunami of DNS attacks overwhelm internet plumbing Another alarming trend highlighted in the report was the dramatic rise in DNS water torture attacks, which bombard authoritative DNS servers to overwhelm systems. Rather than just targeting individual websites, these attacks go after internet infrastructure to maximize damage.

Netscout found that DNS query floods experienced a staggering 553% surge from the first half of 2020 to the last six months of 2023. By overloading DNS servers, adversaries can effectively take down broad swaths of the internet for governments, enterprises and end-users.

Netscout has been reporting on the rising trend of DNS water torture attacks since at least Sept. 2023. A DNS water torture attack is a form of DDoS amplification attack with attackers flooding random DNS requests to overwhelm a victim.

“DNS query floods have been around for more than a decade,” Hummel said. “DNS water torture is just a refinement of that same methodology and really witnessed a surge in 2019 when adversaries began to discover that many authoritative and recursive DNS servers had little to no DDoS protection in front of them.”