What is a DDoS attack and why does it affect health, politics and banking around the world?

the Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. It's becoming more common and you may have experienced it without even realizing it. For example, when you try to schedule a medical appointment online and the page doesn't load, or when you try to make a bank transfer and the web platform doesn't respond.

These attacks occur when malicious actors overwhelm the traffic a website can handle, often causing it to go down.

A report from Radware, a cybersecurity services provider, DDoS attacks up 137% in Q1 2024 compared to Q4 2023And 85% in the second quarter of 2024 compared to the first.

The majority of these cyber attacks targeted organizations in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, influenced by geopolitical conflicts and major events such as the EU Parliament elections, Euro 2024 in Germany, and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Tobias Santoyo, Radware Regional Director for North Latin America, explains that there are three main reasons behind the global increase in these attacks. First of all, he highlights the accessibility of Generative AI tools allow ordinary users to learn and execute attacks of this type more easily.

“The most common attackers are video game players. In Bolivia, for example, a young gamer who was participating in a competition saw how his competitors discovered his IP address and sent him an attack.

According to the report, in 2023, there will be an increase in services that allow on-demand DDoS attacks, particularly focused on web applications and APIs. These services have become more advanced thanks to artificial intelligence, which now helps overcome security measures such as CAPTCHA.

The executive added that these attacks can also be very profitable. Cybercriminals threaten organizations with taking down their web services for a certain period of time in exchange for a sum of money or cryptocurrency.

In this context, He explained that cryptocurrencies complicate the tracking process and make it difficult to identify criminals.Because its decentralized nature and the anonymity it provides makes it difficult to trace transactions and locate attackers.

Santoyo agrees with the report by pointing out that the third reason for the increase in these attacks is political and religious events.

He explains that in Venezuela, where there are social protests in the streets, in the digital sphere, people often seek to create noise by organizing user groups that carry out a series of disruptive actions on platforms.

Jennifer Suarez, Country Manager of Telefónica Tech in Colombia, He points out that the increasing digitization of everyday procedures could also increase the risk of these attacks. Therefore, both government and private organizations must enhance their security measures to protect themselves adequately.

The organizations most affected by these types of attacks are typically those in the banking, government, health, and logistics sectors. These attacks affect everyone from the CEO trying to pay his employees to the businessman who needs to track the shipment of his products through courier services.

To protect themselves from DDoS attacks, businesses should implement several key strategies. First, use specialized DDoS protection services that can detect and mitigate attacks in real time.

Additionally, updating systems and performing security tests regularly helps identify vulnerabilities. Implementing traffic filtering solutions and developing incident response plans is also critical to mitigating the impact of these attacks.