35 DDoS Attack Statistics that Explain Its Rise in 2023

The aim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is to overwhelm a network or server resources in order to force an interruption of work. Using malware, it causes the network’s systems to make hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of requests per second. The server fails to respond to each, triggering downtime. 

This downtime costs the organization millions of dollars in lost business opportunities. The money needed to recover from DDoS adds to the ongoing financial losses. Clever businesses adopt DDoS protection software to safeguard their networks. 

The statistics below explore the current state of DDoS. They talk about the magnitude of attacks, duration, costs, and other factors. 

Top DDoS attack statistics

Below are some relevant statistics on DDoS attacks that showcase what’s new and yet to come with this kind of cyber attack.

• The U.S. faced 43.25% of DDoS attacks in Q2 2022. China and Germany were the second and third most targeted countries, respectively facing 7.91% and 6.64% of attacks.
• In early Q3 2022, Sberbank tackled 450 DDoS attacks, a number equal to the total from the past five years.
• In 2020, a DDoS attack using 14 different vectors was discovered.
• User datagram protocol (UDP) assaults account for over 62% of DDoS attacks, with transmission control protocol (TCP) gaining ground at 11.4%.

• Using over 15 million infected IP addresses globally, Botnets are standard tools for launching DDoS attacks. Though other variants exist, Mirai malware frequently creates these botnets.
• In Q2 2022, an average of 923 daily DDoS attacks were identified. The highest number of attacks (1815) was on June 20, 2022. 
• China, the US, and India harbor the most botnets, which aids DDoS attacks globally.

The rise of DDoS

Threat actors have grown smarter and sneakier. Modern hackers disguise DDoS attacks as genuine traffic, making them harder to detect. The stats below make it obvious they’re on the rise. 

Understanding their growth trajectory will help you respond in a way these bigger magnitude attacks would assume. 

• In 2022, the rate of DDoS attacks escalated. On average, organizations faced about 29.3 attacks daily in the last quarter, an increase of 3.5 from the daily average of 8.4 attacks seen at the end of 2021.
• Global DDoS attack volume increased by 332% in 2022. 

• Layer 7, or application layer, DDoS attacks attempt to overwhelm server resources with hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) traffic. For example, they might send several requests for a particular webpage per second until the server is incapacitated. Layer 7 DDoS attacks saw an increase of 81% in 2022. Some of them exceeded 500,000 requests per second. 
• In 2022, ransom DDoS attacks rose by 67%. 
• HTTP DDoS attacks shot up by 111% in 2022. Taiwan saw a 200% rise from Q2 to Q3 2022. Japan experienced a 105% gain in the same timeframe. 
• Application-layer DDoS attacks shot up by 131% from the previous quarter, inflicting heavy damage on online industries.

Cost of launching a DDoS attack vs. the cost of dealing with one

Launching a DDoS attack is incredibly cost-effective, but the financial losses of recovering from an attack are astronomical. The statistics below compare the financials of DDoS, both for attackers and target victims. 

• Attackers can rent online resources to launch attacks for just $5 per hour. It’s notoriously cheap for the attacker. 
• Online retailers and small businesses lose $ 8,000 to $74,000 for each hour of downtime. 

• Every minute of downtime during a DDoS attack costs $22,000.
• Small or midsize businesses might spend $120,000 to recover from an attack.

Notable DDoS attacks on companies

Some tech giants and reputable companies have suffered DDoS attacks despite having security measures set in place. Some were able to protect their assets, others were not. Continue reading to explore the magnitude of DDoS these companies faced in the recent past.

• When GitHub was attacked in February 2018, it peaked at 126.9 million packets per second. 
• In February 2020, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer encountered a vast DDoS attack that exploited a connectionless lightweight directory access protocol (CLDAP) server. The attack sent data to the victim's IP 50-70 times more than usual.
• In November 2021, a powerful DDoS attack targeted a Microsoft Azure client. The attack surged to 3.45 terabytes per second (Tbps) with a packet rate of 340 million packets per second. 

• In Q3 2022, gaming and gambling companies saw a 405% spike in network-layer attacks from the previous quarter.
• Attacks delivering over 100 GB per second of data skyrocketed in 2020, with a notable attack on Amazon peaking at 2.3 Tbps.

DDoS attack size and duration statistics

DDoS attacks vary in size and duration, depending on the severity of the cyber attack. Some come in waves, making them harder to detect. Others might appear to stop, only to resume again. 

The duration of a DDoS attack also has a lot to do with an organization's security posture. Modern attacks grow more potent and lasting every day. Let’s look at the why and how behind it.

• DDoS attacks can last a day or longer based on severity.
• An average DDoS attack utilized 5.17 gigabytes per second (Gbps) in 2022. 
• DDoS attacks harness 3-5 nodes on diverse networks to attack a target victim. 
• Massive DDoS attacks can surpass 71 million requests per second. 

• Friday is the day of choice for DDoS attacks. 15.36% of attacks happened on Fridays. Conversely, Thursday observed the lowest number of DDoS attacks (12.99%) 
• The average duration of DDoS attacks grew from 30 minutes in 2021 to 50 minutes in 2022.
• The size of DDoS attacks climbed from 600,000 to 6 million requests per second from 2010 to 2020. 
• In 2019, Kaspersky, a cybersecurity platform, found a DDoS attack that lasted around 509 hours.

Fight back

DDoS attacks are ready and on the rise. The stats above indicate a growing threat for businesses and individuals alike, but we can protect ourselves with comprehensive cybersecurity measures. 

Conduct regular security audits and train your people on best security practices. Delve into your cybersecurity strategy for potential gaps. Close them before they put a hole in your pocket. 

Learn more about how to stop the malicious traffic of a DDoS attack.