Vova Kamenker | September 22, 2021

DDoS Threats: The Fifth Dimension of Warfare

Over the years, countries have engaged in battles across air, sea, land, and even space. However, with the growth in digital and cloud technologies, the internet has become another major battlefield used for launching attacks that cripple services and paralyze communications across entire countries. We're calling this the fifth battle dimension and it can bring entire nations to a halt. Nowadays, many attackers strategically choose online services belonging to government bodies, communication networks, and financial institutions to launch attacks on, choosing easy to launch attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). This is an easy choice causing downtime and disrupting services easily.

Highlighted Fifth-Dimension DDoS Attacks

A classic example of the DDoS global threat can be witnessed in the May 2021 incident, when a large-scale DDoS attack brought several organizations in Belgium, including the government and parliament to a stop. By overwhelming them with bad traffic. In February 2021, the Secret Service of Ukraine came under a DDoS attack. The website faced several technical interruptions and struggled to mitigate the attack.

Additional Known DDoS Attacks on Governments in 2021 Include:

Date of attack	Country	Duration of Attack	Companies affected	Comments
16-Jul	Russia	1 Hour	Russian Defense Ministry	Claimed to be the work of a foreign cyberattack.
9-Jul	Ukraine	NA	Defense Ministry portal	The portal has been DDoS’ed several times.
14-May	Ireland	1 Day	Health Service Executive (HSE)	DDoS attacks forerunner for a larger ransomware attack.
10-Mar	Philippines	6 Hours	Philippine government website Gov.ph	The website showed an 'internal server error message.
8-Mar	Italy	1 Day	Italian Lower House of Parliament	The attack brought the website down.
18-Feb	Ukraine	Several Days	Security Service of Ukraine	Technical interruptions and struggle to repel the attack.
14-Feb	Holland	NA	Dutch politician Kati Piri's website	The politically motivated attack shut down the website.
5-Feb	Russia	1 Day	Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya)	A 3-hour intensive attack was launched from abroad.
17-Jan	Russia	2 Hours	Russian Federal Penitentiary Service	Attacks caused slowdown and connectivity issues.

2020 DDoS Attacks

Date of attack	Country	Duration of Attack	Companies affected	Comments
22-Nov	Uganda	24 Hours	Uganda Police Website	The Anonymous group said this was a response to political upheavals in Uganda.
15-Nov	Brazil	NA	TSE (Tribunal Superior Electoral)	The attack slowed down the online services.
6-Oct	USA	7 Hours	Florida Department of State website	1.1 million visitors an hour crashing the site.
2-Sep	New Zealand	NA	MetService	Intermittent attacks caused the site to go down.
11-Aug	Iran	NA	People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran	Website and servers overwhelmed making it inaccessible.
9-Aug	Belarus (E.Europe)	2 Days	Central Election Commission, State Security Committee (KGB), and the Interior Ministry	On election day, attacks launched depriving access.
20-Jul	North Macedonia	Several Hours	Interior, Health, and Education Ministries	Government sites crashed to coincide with elections.
15-Jul	North Macedonia	> 3 Hours	North Macedonia's State Electoral Commission	Delayed announcement of voting results
2-Jun	Ukraine	N/A	Office of the President of Ukraine	The attack targeted the websites of the Office of the President of Ukraine.
31-May	US	Several Days	Minnesota State's Networks	State information systems are overloaded during a crisis situation.
26-May	Russia	NA	United Russia Party	Attacked when launching the remote primary electoral contest to choose party candidates.
6-May	Ukraine	Not Mentioned	Ukrainian Government	The majority of attacks are directed at the website of the President's Office.
1-Apr	Europe	1 Day	Italy's Social Security website	The attack during the Coronavirus payout.

How To Win The DDoS Battle

As DDoS attacks become increasingly complex and quick, there is limited time for current DDoS mitigation systems to react. It is imperative to detect and close all ongoing DDoS vulnerabilities, before an attack, to empower mitigation solutions to respond in the fastest possible way with minimal manual intervention.

Introducing RADAR™ - Detecting Open Vulnerabilities In Real-Time

Working with any mitigation solution installed, RADAR™ offers superior DDoS coverage and automated DDoS protection. RADAR™ simulates over 100 attack vectors with all public-facing IPs 24/7, giving real-time visibility to all DDoS vulnerabilities with no downtime.

How RADAR™ Works

RADAR™ clearly identifies the attack surface risks (DDoS vulnerabilities) automatically as they are generated across live production web-facing IPs. Then it prioritizes the vulnerabilities by the number of targets found prone to and details the nature of those vulnerabilities through unprecedented information. This information enables proper mitigation and remediation setup. Once the remediation is completed RADAR™ validates the remediated vulnerabilities ensuring the remediation process was successful.

Benefits of RADAR™ for Governments

Operational Continuity – DDoS tests are designed to identify basic vulnerabilities in DDoS mitigation posture and are run without disruption to government websites. This ensures that government sites will continue to always function normally, irrespective of whether there are elections or political upheavals.
Data-Driven Protection – Reports are generated representing the number of connections per second sent by MazeBolt's simulation cloud, with the corresponding number of connections per second that bypassed the setup. The reports empower IT personnel to remediate the vulnerability gaps in real-time and reduce the risk of DDoS attacks at all times.
Security at All Times – RADAR™ highlights the most important DDoS vulnerabilities in the mitigation apparatus and/or architecture, allowing security personnel to make the least amount of changes. At the same time making the biggest impact in strengthening the IT infrastructure against DDoS attacks. Since it works continuously and non-disruptively, government sites are always available irrespective of the political changes or upheavals that could be taking place.
Reduce the Workload of In-House IT Staff
– As a result of the inherent weakness in existing mitigation solutions, the IT staff are pulled into action after an attack has occurred. This results in the staff being taken away from their regular activities to identify and mitigate DDoS attacks. Since RADAR™ prevents attacks, the workload of mitigating attacks is non-existent. IT teams are spared from sudden, stressful mitigation activities and can continue to focus on their day-to-day activities.

About MazeBolt

MazeBolt introduces a new standard in DDoS coverage, automatically detecting, analyzing, and prioritizing remediation across the network, doubling coverage, and virtually eliminating DDoS exposure without shutting down organizational operations. MazeBolt’s continuous defense supercharges the performance of CISOs as well as the mitigation service provider.