Those Sneaky Adaptive DDoS Attacks!

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “sneaky” as “marked by stealth, furtiveness, or shiftiness.”  “Stealth” is defined as “intended not to attract attention.” “Furtive” is defined as “done in a quiet and secretive way to avoid being noticed.” And “shifty” is defined as “given to deception, evasion, or fraud” and “capable of evasive movement.” If you are honest, when you use sneaky in a sentence, it is usually followed by a noun, and that combo is rarely ever a compliment.

What’s Sneakier Than Cybercrime?

Obviously, cybercrime is the poster child for all things sneaky.

Even the imagery for cybercrime comprises obscured, faceless entities. They want to be hidden and evasive, and even when discovered, they make you think they are not what you suspect—exactly what a sneaky person would do. Sneaky cybercrime also causes tremendous and irreparable damage.

A TechJury blog by Jacquelyn Bulao from earlier this year titled “How Many Cyber Attacks Happen Per Day in 2023?” marshals a lot of facts and data from diverse sources about the activity, costs, and painful results of sneaky cybercriminals. If you take a sneak peek (Bulao’s word choice—not mine) at the data shared, you will find eye-popping facts including the $6 trillion cost of cyberattacks in 2022, the 30,000 websites hacked daily, and the occurrence of a new attack somewhere on the web every 39 seconds.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are no exception to causing great harm. They are being designed by sneaky people, launched by sneaky machines, and trying to penetrate your defenses in sneaky ways. The NETSCOUT DDoS Threat Intelligence Report is full of evidence and data about how sneaky DDoS attacks have become. NETSCOUT Director of Security Solutions Gary Sockrider and Principal Security Sales Engineer Joe Rainville liberally use “sneaky” to describe what they have observed regarding adaptive DDoS attacks and discuss why choosing the right-sized solution matters so much against modern threats in “One Size Does NOT Fit All When it Comes to DDoS Protection,” part of our Problem Solvers Series.

Advice and Observations from the Experts

Highlights from the discussion Sockrider and Rainville led include great advice and astute observations on dealing with sneaky adaptive DDoS attacks:

• Broad and deep visibility is essential because bad actors target the full IT stack and try to penetrate in ways and at locations where you will not notice the breach.
• Stronger collaboration between SecOps and NetOps professionals driven by the combined threat of DDoS and ransomware is leading to better detection of sneaky adaptive DDoS attacks.
• Sneaky adaptive DDoS attacks don’t look the way you would expect, making them harder to identify and mitigate by using protection focused on volumetric attacks because they attack at the application layer to disable access.
• Adaptive DDoS attacks are more complex and methodical, with sophisticated actors, nation states, and organized crime entities probing and doing reconnaissance on specific targets, looking for vulnerabilities and monitoring to gauge efficacy and responses, and then changing vectors to assess new countermeasures.
• Adaptive DDoS defenses must reflect the reality of the attacks launched, and you must think like the adversary to thwart sneaky methods and tactics.
• NETSCOUT’s hybrid on-premises and cloud-based approach provides the most complete, automated, integrated, and cost-effective real-time adaptive DDoS protection.
• Our adaptive DDoS solutions are licensed based on traffic and not on the type of attack you receive.

Clearly there is an intelligence and sophistication to both the people behind sneaky adaptive DDoS attacks and their methods. As these smart bad actors up their game of attack, smart defenders must up their game to survive. It’s really a type of cybersecurity Darwinism, where adaptability effectiveness determines the winner. 

So, learn how to choose the right approach and solution for adaptive DDoS protection that meets your unique needs, aligns to the realities of modern attacks, and is built on industry best practices and best-in-class solutions for protection and risk mitigation of those sneaky $%*&@^! adaptive DDoS attacks.

Learn more about combatting adaptive DDoS attacks in “One Size Does NOT Fit All When it Comes to DDoS Protection,” part of our Problem Solvers Series.