Follows smaller increase in first half of the year.
There was a 25 percent increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the second half of 2024.
According to Netscout, this is compared with the first half of the year - where there was a 12 percent increase in attack levels.
It also claimed that attackers have increasingly leveraged sophisticated DDoS platforms that offer automation features – including attack scheduling, dynamic vector adjustment, and repetition – to maintain pressure on targets.
Richard Hummel, threat intelligence lead for Netscout, said: “From a cybersecurity perspective, 2024 will largely be remembered as the year in which geopolitically motivated hacktivists upped the ante.
“In terms of the targets themselves, threat actors expanded their focus to include more specific critical infrastructure, such as financial services, healthcare institutions, and government bodies. This resulted in a marked increase in the frequency and intensity of daily attacks against these industries during and immediately following election campaigns. The aim: to cause maximum disruption to public life, drawing attention to cyber criminals’ political agendas.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
