A similar trend was evident in Asia Pacific and Latin America. In North America, fixed-line operators were the most targeted vertical industry, with wireless operators in fifth place.
At a country level, the 10 markets where wireless operators have been most under attack are Poland, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Oman, Malaysia, India, Cyrus, Republic of Korea and Morocco. In terms of fixed-line operators, the US was top, followed by Canada, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, India, France, China and the UK.
Richard Hummel, director of threat intelligence at Netscout, warned that organisations must recognise that traditional defences are no longer sufficient as hacktivist groups leverage more automation, shared infrastructure and evolving tactics.
As he points out, criminals are also making far more use of artificial intelligence to refine their strategies, with the integration of AI assistants and the use of large language models (LLMs), such as WormGPT and FraudGPT.
“Organisations need intelligence-driven, proven DDoS defences that can deal with the sophisticated attacks we see today,” pitched Hummel.
Efforts by law enforcement groups to target hacktivist groups can be successful, as illustrated by the recent takedown of NoName057(16). However, preventing its future return to the top DDoS hacktivist threat is not guaranteed, said Hummel. He remarked that organisations need “intelligence-driven, proven DDoS defences that can deal with the sophisticated attacks we see today”.
Meanwhile, other vendors have been introducing greater DDoS protection levels for telcos and others. For example, Nokia offers the Deepfield DDoS Defender product for network security and has expanded its protection measures. In 2024, it noted that DDoS attacks had become more frequent, sophisticated and potent over the previous two years with some operators registering over 100 attacks daily.
In July, UK-based Neos Networks launched advanced DDoS Mitigation as an integrated feature of its Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) service.
– Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV
