5G might lead to the Biggest DDoS Attacks in 2021

DDoS or distributed denial of service attack is that the hacker hopes to disrupt their victim's service with a flood of useless traffic. While this attack doesn't expose user data or doesn't lead to a compromise, it can result in an outage and loss of user trust if not "quickly mitigated. Hackers also use different methods of channelising this attack and even provide them with "fancy names" such as Smurf, Tsunami, XMAS tree, HULK, Slowloris, cache bust, TCP amplification, and more. The attacker may not only target a user but may attack every IP in a network.

We’ve already started to see how adoption of technologies like 5G, IoT and cloud are driving new frontiers for business – and this will continue in 2021. For 5G in particular, while it allows businesses to speed up digital transformation and create dynamic customer experiences, it is also expanding the attack surface exponentially as more and more interconnected devices come online -- and opening organizations up to new risks. Google recently revealed that it was hit with a massive 2.5Tbps DDoS attack in 2017 – the largest such attack ever recorded -- even topping the 2.3 Tbps attack that targeted Amazon in 2018. Comparatively, these attacks were 4x the scale of the massive Mirai botnet attacks of 2016 that comprised of more than 600,000 IoT devices and endpoints.

Going forward, phishing emails spoofing IT asking for passwords are common – but what if that email was followed by an urgent message from the CEO on WhatsApp? Attackers could also use manipulated videos of executive leaders on social channels to entice customers, employees, partners and more to click on malicious links – creating broader new attack avenues for malicious actors.

As 5G is rolled out across the globe, cyber-attacks will pale in comparison to the massive, and more frequent, DDoS attacks 5G will enable. 5G will increase the overall bandwidth available and allow a massive amount of IoT devices to be connected. Because there is still no standard for IoT security, these devices are often easy to compromise and control as part of amassing a botnet army. As a result, we’ll see the first ever 5Tbps DDoS attack being launched within the next year. The 2Tbps attacks thwarted by Google and Amazon will become more commonplace – causing massive disruption of online and connected businesses.

The pandemic has created tremendous pressure on employees and their families. Economic uncertainty and the move to remote work and school has put many in unchartered territory. These new challenges could likely drive more employees to make poor decisions when it comes to cybersecurity and create a whole new wave of insiders. As we’ve already seen in 2020, attackers are increasingly offering employees with privileged access tempting financial incentives to share or ‘accidentally’ leak their credentials. In addition, privileged access on the dark web is more popular than ever, with some reports indicating that attackers will pay a premium for privileged access to corporate networks, VPNs and workstations.The potential financial payoff, combined with increased economic anxiety, will drive new threats that organizations will struggle to deal with.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief editor, VARINDIA