DDoS attacks hit IPv6

Hacktivists dominate DDoS.

The first distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the IPv6 infrastructure have been detected.

Arbor Networks said it customers have reported DDoS attacks hitting thier IPv6 networks.

"While this is the first instance of reported IPv6 DDoS attacks, there are enough attacks (4 per cent reported them) to make a response, and that will grow in the future," Darren Anstee, EMEA solutions architect at Arbor Networks said.

Anstee said these attacks are large but can be dealt with as they are easy to detect.

“The worry is the growth in application-layer attacks and those against government web services. They are using other sophisticated attack vectors as a lot of apps run over port 80, and if an attack is against a web service then you will have problems."

Ideologically motivated ‘hacktivism' was the single most readily identified motivation behind DDoS attacks, as opposed to being competition, extortion or financially driven.

It claimed that large volumetric DDoS attacks were the "new normal", as during the survey period of October 2010 to November 2011 attacks in the Gbps range were detected.

“We are starting to see attacks go up again and we see more than one attack per month.

“With large attacks, the maximum size has fallen back. Last year there were 100GB attacks and now 60GB is more common.”

Arbor claimed that despite the decline in the size of attacks, network operators should not misconstrue this as a decrease in their severity – an attack in the tens of gigabits per second is more than sufficient to down a business.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com