Radware 2024 Report: Malicious Web Application and API Transactions Rise 171% Driven by Layer 7 Web DDoS Attacks

Rhea-AI Summary

Radware releases its 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report, highlighting the increase in DDoS attacks per customer, rise in DNS query flood vectors, and the targeting of government, business, and travel websites. The report emphasizes the intensifying technological race between good and bad actors, with a focus on evolving attack patterns and the impact of Generative AI on threat actors.

Insights

Cybersecurity Analyst

The uptick in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, as reported by Radware, indicates a growing threat landscape that organizations across various sectors must navigate. The doubling of attacks per customer suggests that attackers are becoming more aggressive and the tripling of DNS query flood vectors points to an evolution in attack methodologies. This trend presents significant implications for businesses in terms of operational continuity, data security and customer trust.

Companies may need to increase their investment in cybersecurity infrastructure and services, which could impact their operating expenses and profit margins. However, such investments are critical to safeguard against potential revenue losses and brand damage that could result from successful attacks. This is particularly relevant for the government, business/economy and travel sectors that are reportedly facing the most hacktivist claimed DDoS attacks.

From a stock market perspective, cybersecurity firms like Radware could see an increase in demand for their services, potentially leading to revenue growth. Conversely, companies with inadequate cybersecurity measures could face investor skepticism, possibly affecting stock prices negatively.

Risk Management Consultant

The surge in DDoS attacks underscores the importance of comprehensive risk management strategies. Businesses must assess their vulnerability to such threats and implement robust mitigation measures. The report by Radware serves as a critical reminder that risk management is an ongoing process that needs to adapt to the evolving threat landscape.

Organizations need to consider the impact of DDoS attacks on their supply chains and customer service capabilities. The potential for operational disruption could lead to contractual penalties, lost sales and a decline in customer satisfaction. In the long-term, businesses that fail to manage these risks effectively may suffer competitive disadvantages as customers and partners lose confidence in their ability to provide secure and reliable services.

For investors, understanding a company's risk profile and its approach to managing cyber threats is essential for informed investment decisions. Companies that demonstrate proactive risk management may be viewed as more attractive investment opportunities.

Technology Market Analyst

The findings in Radware's report not only reflect the immediate concerns for businesses but also signal a potential shift in the technology sector. The mention of advancements like Generative AI contributing to the proficiency of threat actors suggests that as technology evolves, so too does the complexity of cyber threats.

This evolution can drive market demand for next-generation cybersecurity solutions, including those powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, to detect and respond to sophisticated attacks. The growth in the cybersecurity market could be substantial, as businesses seek to protect themselves against increasingly complex threats.

Investors might look towards companies that are innovating in the cybersecurity space, as they may offer growth potential. Moreover, the performance of cybersecurity stocks may become increasingly correlated with the frequency and severity of cyberattacks, making the sector's dynamics an interesting area for investment analysis.

• DDoS attacks per customer nearly double
• Web DDoS attacks relentlessly continue throughout the year
• DNS query flood vectors increase more than three fold
• Government, business/economy, and travel websites face the most hacktivist claimed DDoS attacks worldwide

MAHWAH, N.J., Feb. 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Radware® (NASDAQ: RDWR), a leading provider of cyber security and application delivery solutions, released its 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report.

“The technological race between good and bad actors has never been more intense,” said Pascal Geenens, Radware’s director of threat intelligence. “With advancements like Generative AI, inexperienced threat actors are becoming more proficient and skilled attackers more emboldened. In 2024, look for attack numbers to climb and attack patterns, like the shift in Web DDoS attacks, to continue to evolve.”

Radware’s comprehensive report leverages intelligence provided by network and application attack activity sourced from Radware’s Cloud and Managed Services, Global Deception Network, and threat intelligence research team during 2023. In addition, it draws from information found on Telegram, a public messaging platform often used by cybercriminals.

Radware’s report reveals key themes about the emerging threat landscape.

DDoS Attacks Surge Unprosecuted
“With almost two years of illegal denial of service left unprosecuted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the unfettered rise of hacktivism, the threshold into a life of cybercrime has reached a new low,” said Geenens. “We have yet to see DDoS attacks used as a mainstream vehicle to settle disagreements or differences, but plenty of groundwork has been laid by proficient hacktivists.”

Between the close of 2022 and 2023 DDoS attacks rose worldwide:

• Globally, the average number of DDoS attacks per customer grew by 94%. On a regional basis, the increase in the number of DDoS attacks targeting customers varied:
  • EMEA rose 43%        
  • The Americas grew 196%
  • APAC climbed 260%        
• The Americas were targeted by almost half of all global DDoS attacks. The EMEA region, accounting for 39% of the DDoS attacks, mitigated 65% of the global DDoS attack volume. The APAC region accounted for almost 12% of global DDoS attacks.
  

Hacktivists Attack with Unrelenting Conviction
“In 2023, geopolitical conflicts and ideological and religious motivations fueled cyber operations and online campaigns,” explained Geenens. “New hacktivist tactics first introduced in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine spread and accelerated. Hacktivist-driven DDoS activity peaked in October of 2023, reaching record levels, following the conflict between Israel and Hamas.”

According to data gathered from Telegram:

• Number of attacks: In the first half of 2023, threat actors claimed 5,606 attacks. During the second half, this number increased by 24% to 6,971 claimed DDoS attacks.
• Geographic targets: In 2023, Israel was the country most targeted by hacktivists with 1480 DDoS attacks, followed by India (1242 attacks) and the United States (1164 attacks).
• Top claiming actors: With 3,391 claimed DDoS attacks, NoName057(16) was by far the most active hacker group in 2023, followed by Anonymous Sudan (793 attacks), and Executor DDoS v2 (765 attacks).
• Website targets: Globally, the most targeted web category in 2023 was government with 2,694 claimed attacks. Business/economy and travel websites ranked second and third, with 1793 and 1624 attacks respectively.

Web DDoS Attacks Emerge as a Threat
“Throughout 2023, we observed a global shift in DDoS tactics as attacks grew more sophisticated, catching companies off guard and hitting where it hurts most,” reported Geenens. “Increasingly, DoS attacks progressed to Layer 7, giving rise to damaging Web DDoS threats. Layer 7 attacks target not just online applications and their APIs, but also essential infrastructure, such as the Domain Name System.”

• In 2023, almost 95% of the attacks targeting DNS services leveraged DNS-A query floods.
• DNS query flood vectors increased more than three-fold from fewer than 9 out of every 1,000 attack vectors before the fourth quarter of 2022 to 28 out of every 1,000 during the fourth quarter of 2023.
• The total malicious web application and API transactions increased by 171% in 2023 compared to 2022. A significant part of this increase in activity can be attributed to layer 7 encrypted web application attacks or Web DDoS attacks.
  

Industries Face Disproportionate Assaults
“In 2023, finance, retail and research and education saw the highest share of cyber attacks among leading industries worldwide,” said Geenens. “These high-value targets attract malicious actors because of the lucrative and sensitive data they store, the widespread disruption and publicity they generate when breached, and the tactical advantage they serve in hybrid warfare.”

• Global DDoS attack activity:
  • Finance and technology organizations bore 29% and 22% of the attacks respectively, approximately half of which were encrypted web attacks.
  • Healthcare experienced 14% of the attacks, with 92% of the attack activity consisting of TCP attack vectors.
  • The government had to fend off 12% of the attacks, with the most aggressive attacks (45%) coming in the form of DNS-A query floods.
    
• Global web application and API attack activity:
  • Retail (37%) and transportation (19%) were the most attacked industries. Software as a service (8%), carrier (8%), and utility (4%) rounded out the top five most attacked industries.
  • Organizations in research and education (32%), telecom (25%), technology (19%), finance (10%) and healthcare (6%) were most targeted by DNS flood attacks.
    

Radware’s complete 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report can be downloaded here.

About Radware
Radware^® (NASDAQ: RDWR) is a global leader of cyber security and application delivery solutions for physical, cloud, and software defined data centers. Its award-winning solutions portfolio secures the digital experience by providing infrastructure, application, and corporate IT protection, and availability services to enterprises globally. Radware’s solutions empower enterprise and carrier customers worldwide to adapt to market challenges quickly, maintain business continuity, and achieve maximum productivity while keeping costs down. For more information, please visit the Radware website.

Radware encourages you to join our community and follow us on: Facebook, LinkedIn, Radware Blog, X, YouTube, and Radware Mobile for iOS and Android.

©2024 Radware Ltd. All rights reserved. Any Radware products and solutions mentioned in this press release are protected by trademarks, patents, and pending patent applications of Radware in the U.S. and other countries. For more details, please see: https://www.radware.com/LegalNotice/. All other trademarks and names are property of their respective owners.

THIS PRESS RELEASE AND THE RADWARE 2024 GLOBAL THREAT ANALYSIS REPORT ARE PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THESE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE AN INDICATOR OF RADWARE'S BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OR OPERATING RESULTS FOR ANY PRIOR, CURRENT, OR FUTURE PERIOD.

Radware believes the information in this document is accurate in all material respects as of its publication date. However, the information is provided without any express, statutory, or implied warranties and is subject to change without notice.

The contents of any website or hyperlinks mentioned in this press release are for informational purposes and the contents thereof are not part of this press release.

Safe Harbor Statement
This press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements made herein that are not statements of historical fact, including statements about Radware’s plans, outlook, beliefs, or opinions, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as “believes,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “estimates,” “plans,” and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as “will,” “should,” “would,” “may,” and “could.” For example, when we say that that in 2024, you should look for attack numbers to climb and attack patterns, like the shift in Web DDoS attacks, to continue to evolve, we are using a forward-looking statement. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, could differ materially from Radware’s current forecasts and estimates. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the impact of global economic conditions and volatility of the market for our products; the effects of the current attacks by the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and the war between Israel and Hamas and Israel and Hezbollah; natural disasters and public health crises, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; a shortage of components or manufacturing capacity could cause a delay in our ability to fulfill orders or increase our manufacturing costs; our business may be affected by sanctions, export controls, and similar measures, targeting Russia and other countries and territories, as well as other responses to Russia’s military conflict in Ukraine, including indefinite suspension of operations in Russia and dealings with Russian entities by many multi-national businesses across a variety of industries; our ability to successfully implement our strategic initiative to accelerate our cloud business; our ability to expand our operations effectively; timely availability and customer acceptance of our new and existing solutions; risks and uncertainties relating to acquisitions or other investments; the impact of economic and political uncertainties and weaknesses in various regions of the world, including the commencement or escalation of hostilities or acts of terrorism; intense competition in the market for cyber security and application delivery solutions and in our industry in general, and changes in the competitive landscape; changes in government regulation; outages, interruptions, or delays in hosting services or our internal network system; compliance with open source and third-party licenses; the risk that our intangible assets or goodwill may become impaired; our dependence on independent distributors to sell our products; long sales cycles for our solutions; changes in foreign currency exchange rates; undetected defects or errors in our products or a failure of our products to protect against malicious attacks; the availability of components and manufacturing capacity; the ability of vendors to provide our hardware platforms and components for our main accessories; our ability to protect our proprietary technology; intellectual property infringement claims made by third parties; changes in tax laws; our ability to realize our investment objectives for our cash and liquid investments; our ability to attract, train, and retain highly qualified personnel; and other factors and risks over which we may have little or no control. This list is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that could cause actual results to differ. For a more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties affecting Radware, refer to Radware’s Annual Report on Form 20-F, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other risk factors discussed from time to time by Radware in reports filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and, except as required by applicable law, Radware undertakes no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statement in order to reflect events or circumstances after the date any such statement is made. Radware’s public filings are available from the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or may be obtained on Radware’s website at www.radware.com.

Media Contact:
Gerri Dyrek
Radware
Gerri.Dyrek@radware.com 

FAQ

What did Radware's 2024 Global Threat Analysis Report highlight?

Radware's report highlighted the increase in DDoS attacks per customer, rise in DNS query flood vectors, and the targeting of government, business, and travel websites.

Who is the director of threat intelligence at Radware?

Pascal Geenens is the director of threat intelligence at Radware.

What advancements are mentioned in the report that are impacting threat actors?

Generative AI is mentioned in the report as an advancement impacting threat actors.

Where does Radware source its intelligence for the report?

Radware sources its intelligence from Radware’s Cloud and Managed Services, Global Deception Network, and threat intelligence research team, as well as from information found on Telegram.