NETSCOUT’s Richard Hummel Speaks About South Korean and Romanian DDoS Trends

NETSCOUT’s Director of Threat Intelligence, Richard Hummel, was featured on Patrick Donegan’s HardenStance to discuss the latest patterns in DDoS threat activity. In this interview, Hummel covered recent NETSCOUT findings spanning South Korea and Romania. These spikes in geopolitical DDoS attacks have varying intents, but all have pro-Russian hacktivist groups taking credit and spooling up the attacks. 

In South Korea, there was a wave of DDoS attacks in March and again in late June, coinciding with US-South Korea joint military drills (March spike) and comments made by South Korean Ambassador Hwang in regards to the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (June spike).  

Romania’s spike was related to further actions taken by South Korea in June and July. Korean officials met with Romanian leadership to discuss a deal to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine while also expanding their defensive cooperation. Hummel notes in the interview that Romania is often targeted by pro-Russian groups, but the spikes line up with these actions. That said, the attacks appear to be following Ambassador Hwang as he moves around the world discussing policies.

Additionally, Hummel discusses the South Korean Company, a congregation of suspected pro-Russian hacktivist groups targeting South Korea with DDoS attacks. The attacks have also been mixed with Ransomware attacks, creating a triple extortion situation (stolen files, encrypted files, and DDoS attacks). 

More than 100 countries were victims of DDoS attacks in the second half of 2023, according to NETSCOUT’s DDoS Threat Intelligence Report. This encompasses more than half of the independent nations in the world.  

Finally, a wide variety of industries are being hit by these attacks. Nobody and no industry are safe, from government services to healthcare to telecom to recreational services.  

Hummel will continue to appear on Hardenstance for additional interviews as further DDoS attack trends arise. Stay tuned to learn more about the current DDoS landscape.

Check out the full conversation, titled “Hacktivism Brings DDoS Spikes to South Korea and Romania” on HardenStance or YouTube (below):