Within its own user base, a 108% increase in attacks trending upwards at the last quarter could spell trouble for 2025

Based on its user ecosystem incident data for 2024, a DDoS protection firm has released a summary of the attack trends of last year.

First, attacks on its users around the world had increased by an average of 108% in 2024. By distribution, the financial sector was hit the hardest, accounting for 22% of all attacks. This is followed by government services (19%) and telecommunications (16%).

Second, between the first and second halves of the year, attack patterns had shifted: Hacktivists were constituting roughly 70% of attacks in the first half of the year, while profit-driven criminals had launched more attacks in the second half, accounting for 58%.

Other findings
Third, data trends show that  political events triggered the largest spikes in DDoS activity in 2024. These included the US presidential election in November (where attacks against US-based targets had increased by 316% over the previous year) and the European Parliament elections (where attacks against EU targets had increased by 248%).

Fourth, the largest DDoS attack recorded and mitigated by the firm for the year was 1.6 Tbp/s in scale. Most attacks in the data were short but intense: the average attack duration was 23 minutes, although users in some sectors such as telecommunications had experienced more sustained attacks lasting up to 16 hours.

Fifth, in terms of geographic impact, users in the US remained the most targeted country (14.3% of attacks), followed by China (12.8%) and India (10.2%). As an off note, users in Singapore received 6.8% of global DDoS traffic: almost double that of 2023’s figure of 3.6%. 

Overall, the data showed the 108% growth in attacks had accrued in an accelerated pace throughout the year, with quarter-over-quarter increases over the 12 months.

According to the report by StormWall, the gradual quarter-to-quarter rise in pace would likely continue into 2025, and its own user base could experience a 150% to 200% year-on-year increase in malicious traffic by the end of this year.