Prolexic Issues High Alert DDoS Attack Threat Advisory

Prolexic Technologies the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, now part of Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), has issued a high alert threat advisory on NTP amplification DDoS attacks.

This attack method has surged in popularity this year, fueled by the availability of new DDoS toolkits that make it simple to generate high-bandwidth, high-volume DDoS attacks against online targets. 

A complimentary copy of the threat advisory is available at www.prolexic.com/ntp-amplification.

“During the month of February, we saw the use of NTP amplification attacks surge 371 percent against our client base,” said Stuart Scholly, SVP/GM Security, Akamai Technologies.

“In fact, the largest attacks we’ve seen on our network this year have all been NTP amplification attacks.”

While NTP amplification attacks have been a threat for many years, a number of new DDoS attack toolkits have made it easier for malicious actors to launch attacks with just a handful of servers.

With the current batch of NTP amplification attack toolkits, malicious actors could launch 100 Gbps attacks – or larger – by leveraging just a few vulnerable NTP servers.

Unlike the largest attacks of the past two years, the NTP amplification attacks were not focused on any particular sector. Industries targeted by NTP amplification attacks in February included finance, gaming, e-Commerce, Internet and telecom, media, education, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers and security.

In the Prolexic Security Engineering & Response Team (PLXsert) lab environment, simulated NTP amplification attacks produced amplified responses of 300x or more for attack bandwidth and 50x for attack volume, making this an extremely dangerous attack method.

PLXsert’s NTP Amplification Attack threat advisory provides a detailed analysis of the threat, sample payloads, recommended DDoS protection and mitigation techniques, as well as case studies on two NTP amplification attack campaigns directed against Prolexic clients.

A complimentary download of the threat advisory is available at www.prolexic.com/ntp-amplification.

Designed to provide early warnings of new or modified DDoS denial of service attack signatures and scripts, recently observed by PLXsert, each threat advisory contains a detailed description of the type of DDoS attack, a list of attack signatures, and the specific network infrastructure or application that it targets.

In addition, Prolexic’s DDoS mitigation experts also offer insight into the nature of each type of attack, as well as provide specific warnings as to how the attack will affect businesses and enterprises of different sizes and infrastructures.