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The large attack surface of communications services providers (CSPs) allows perpetrators to set up sneaky attacks that can easily go unnoticed by conventional intrusion detection systems, but can cause significant damage when attack traffic converges at the destination.

The large attack surface of communications services providers (CSPs) allows perpetrators to set up sneaky attacks that can easily go unnoticed by conventional intrusion detection systems, but can cause significant damage when attack traffic converges at the destination.

Nexusguard’s research findings​ reveal that communications service providers (CSPs) are increasingly abused by perpetrators as a tunnel to direct DDoS attacks to their downstream networks. This new breed of attacks are carried out in a stealthy way that they can easily bypass detection. Faced with evolving DDoS attack patterns and tactics that are more difficult to detect and mitigate, service providers are presented with a dilemma. Should they just pass on the attack traffic, knowingly or unknowingly, to the victim customer?

For communications service providers (CSPs), relying on legacy solutions to provide what is known as ‘cleanpipe’ service to customers is far from enough.

Last year, the FBI cracked down on the world’s 15 biggest DDoS-for-hire websites, known as “booters”, which are believed to have mounted more than 200,000 attacks since 2014.

In Q4 2018, 50% more ASNs suffered from a new type of stealthy network attacks carried out in a piecemeal fashion.

In the third quarter we identified a new, sneaky tactic whereby attackers contaminated a diverse pool of IP addresses across hundreds of IP prefixes with small-sized junk traffic.

Among all DDoS attacks, amplification attacks are the ones bringing about the most considerable impact on cloud users.