Mis-configured security measure leads DDoS amplification attacks to soar at end of 2017

DDoS attacks using domain name server (DNS) amplification increased more than 357 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to the previous year. A new report by protection specialist Nexusguard attributes the rise to the use of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a technology that's intended to add integrity and security to the DNS protocol. If not correctly configured, however, DNSSEC-enabled servers can be deliberately targeted to reflect amplification attacks, due to the large size of the responses they generate. While the overall number of DDoS attacks has fallen 12 percent compared to the same period last year,… [Continue Reading]