Akamai Technologies has released its State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2011, based on data collected from its massive global network. In it, they observed that attack traffic online originated from 195 countries or regions, but that more than half of this traffic came from the Asia-Pacific region.
While examining the continental distribution of observed attack traffic in Q3 2011, Akamai said that slightly more than 49 percent originated in the Asia Pacific/Oceania region, up from 47 percent last quarter. Indonesia hit the top spot with 14 percent, followed by Taiwan and China with just under 20 percent of observed attack traffic combined. Attack traffic originating in Europe was down slightly to 28 percent; North & South America accounted for nearly 19 percent; and the remaining 4 percent came from Africa.
These numbers helped Akamai track patterns, and as such they noticed a 2,000% increase in DDoS incidents across their customer base over the last three years. While investigating the DDoS attacks, the company observed that port-based attacks are still quite popular.
Attacks targeting Port 80 (WWW/HTTP) dropped by about a third as compared to the second quarter, while attacks targeting Port 23 (Telnet) grew by almost the same amount. The list of top ports targeted remained consistent with the second quarter, with Port 445 remaining the target of an overwhelming majority of observed attacks as compared to the other ports in the top 10, the report explains.
“The growing sophistication and intensity of Web-based attacks and the ongoing prevalence of port-based attacks highlight both the importance of online security, and the need for a defense-in-depth strategy,” the company said in a statement.
In addition to attack patterns and points of origin, Akamai also details broadband adoption across the globe, average connection speed, and the growth in mobile connectivity.
The full report is here, but registration is required.
