2016 DDoS attack trends

Navigate the ever-changing DDoS-risk landscape

Published September 2016

If you have been watching InfoSec headlines lately, you might think to yourself, “Hmmm, is ransomware the new DDoS?” No, DDoS is still DDoS and it’s still happening. Just because the cyber-criminal underworld has added ransomware as its latest extortion tool doesn’t mean that they’ve let go of the still lucrative, still too easy, denial-of-service extortion campaigns.

So if the old attacks are still around, and ransomware isn’t the new DDoS, then what is? The DDoS research and defense community is a small one, and they mostly follow each other around between companies. At F5, we have several veterans of the DDoS defense world, and based on their experience, research, and observations fighting DDoS over the last three years, three trends have emerged.