DDoS Attack Trends for 2021

Using attack data from F5 Silverline, F5 Labs has just posted it's annual review of DDoS attacks for 2021.

Go read the article now for a full breakdown on how attack frequency, size, methods and targets have changed over the past year, and if you're new to cyber security then now is a good time to go learn the basics of a DDoS attack.

DDoS attacks by industry sector

DDoS Attacks By The Numbers

• Silverline mitigated its largest-ever DDoS attack, which peaked at just under 1.4 Tbps, almost 5.5 times larger than the largest attack in 2020.
• The overall number of DDoS attacks declined 3% between 2020 and 2021.
• Small to medium-size DDoS attacks (up to 250 Gbps) declined by 5%.
• DDoS attacks larger than 250 Gbps grew by 1,300%.
• Finance, the target of over 25% of all attacks, became the most attacked sector in 2021.
• Volumetric (network flood) DDoS attacks are still the most prevalent, accounting for 59% of all attacks.
• Protocol and application DDoS attacks both grew in 2021 by 2% and 5%, respectively.
• TCP DDoS attacks almost doubled in 2021 compared with 2020 and accounted for 27% of all attacks.

DDoS attack methodsDDoS attack bandwidth

This was just a brief summary of the main findings from the report and if anyone has any questions about the data, analysis or attack methods in general, please post a question here and I'd be delighted to answer!