Business users warned of growing DDoS risk

US-based Prolexic Technologies has shed some light on the growing threat of large and sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The firm specialises in DDoS prevention services and claims to have uncovered a series of attacks over the past week employing the itsoknoproblembro toolkit.

It is said to feature multiple infrastructure and application-layer vectors that can carry out attacks against multiple ports and targets.

Most providers would struggle to combat DDoS attacks with these characteristics.

The company claims the toolkit is being used in conjunction with complex and highly-sophisticated attack methods.

"The attack signatures are extremely complex and Prolexic has recorded sustained floods peaking at 70 Gbps and more than 30 million pps against some of its customers," said the company in a statement.

"Most mitigation providers would struggle to combat DDoS attacks with these characteristics."

Scott Hammack, chief executive of Prolexic, said only a "handful" of companies could survive a 70Gbps hit, and that attacks like this are on the rise.

"The size and sophistication of this threat has created a high-alert within various industries and with good reason," said Hammack.

"I'm proud to say we've successfully mitigated multiple itsoknoproblembro campaigns throughout the year, even when attack vectors have continuously modulated during the course of the assault."