26 per cent of distributed denial of service attacks this year originated from India: Symantec

NEW DELHI: India has emerged as the top destination for origination of distributed denial of service ( DDoS) cyber attacks, accounting for 26 per cent of such attacks on gaming, software and media sectors, security solutions firm Symantec today said.

Cyber criminals use DDoS attacks to disrupt sites by bombarding them with traffic from multiple sources, resulting in online service becoming unavailable for a period of time. Other countries in the list include the US (17 per cent), Singapore, Vietnam and China.

"The sources for DoS attacks are often countries that have a high number of bot infected machines and a low adoption rate of filtering of spoofed packets," Symantec India Director Technology Sales Tarun Kaura told media.

He explained further this does not mean that people behind the attack are located in India since the attacks are often orchestrated remotely.

"However, it is a reflection of India emerging as a hotbed to launch these attacks, potentially because of the low cyber security awareness, lack of adequate security practices and infrastructure," he said.

Symantec's report includes global data collected between January to August this year.

The report found that DDoS services are available for hire for less than USD 5 (Rs 300) to perform the attacks for a few minutes against any target.

"Longer attacks can be bought for larger prices. They also offer monthly subscription services, often used by gamers to take down competitors," Kaura said.

He added that the gaming industry experienced nearly 46 per cent of attacks, followed by software and media sectors.

"While it's not happening on a broad scale now, it is likely that we will see an increase in DDoS attacks originating from mobile and Internet of Things devices in the future as well," he said.

Asked about the motivation behind such attacks, Kaura said financial blackmail and competition were among some of the reasons behind the attacks.

"Many are also using DDoS as a diversion technique to distract IT security response teams while a targeted attack is conducted," he added.