Prolexic Technologies Successfully Mitigates Another Major DDoS Attack

Prolexic, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation provider, claimed that recently it was able to successfully mitigate a major DDoS attack of unprecedented size in terms of packet-per-second volume that was directed against an Asian company in a high-risk e-commerce market.

The company figured that the DDoS attack generated larger than usual TCP SYN Floods and I CMP Floods, both of which are common DDoS attack methods. Considering the magnitude of the attack – the volume reached levels of approximately 25 million packets per second, there was nothing usual about it and other businesses should equip themselves against an escalating magnitude of attacks anticipated in the next 6 to 8 months.

Prolexic's security experts found 176,000 remotely controlled PCs, or bots, in the attacker's botnet (robot network). This represents a significant threat as typically only 5,000-10,000 bots have been employed in the five previous attacks mitigated by Prolexic.

Officials with the company remarked that Prolexic sees this massive attack in Asia with millions of packets per second as an early warning beacon of the increasing magnitude of DDoS attacks that may be on the horizon for Europe and North America in the next 6 to 8 months. High risk clients, such as those extremely large companies in the gaming and gambling industries in Asia, are usually the first targets of these huge botnets just to see how successful they can be.

The DDoS problem should be of major concern to any company which relies on an Internet presence for its business or for its reputation. Prolexic claimed that it works with hundreds of businesses and has been at the forefront of mitigating all varieties and sizes of DDoS and related network attacks. It currently detects, fights, and mitigates thousands of DDoS attacks each year, and continually observes new, crafted and specialized DDoS attacks.

The company added that it has invested millions to be ready for this type of DDoS attack and while it has only seen this botnet once in the Western Hemisphere to date, it is likely to follow a common pattern and become much more prevalent. The company with its experience is well ahead in the game and is confident that it can stop attacks of this magnitude.