Akamai Releases "State of the Internet" Q4 Report

Akamai Technologies has released its Fourth Quarter, 2012 State of the Internet Report based on the data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform.

The Fourth Quarter Report includes insight into 768 DDoS attacks in 2012 reported by Akamai customers, which is up more than 200 per cent from 2011. Of those, 35 per cent, targeted companies in the commerce sector and 22 per cent focussed on Media and Entertainment companies.

As highlighted in the third quarter, 2012 report, Akamai was involved in protecting some of the organizations targeted by the "Operation Ababil" series of DDoS attacks. Those attacks continued through October before pausing until December 25, at which point they carried on into January of 2013.

Akamai observed attack traffic from 177 unique countries/regions during the fourth quarter of 2012, down from 180 in the third quarter. The report shows that nearly 700 million unique IPv4 addresses from 240 countries/regions are connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform.
 
David Belson said, "Looking back across the year, we observed strong growth of our key connectivity metrics around the world.  We believe that this points to greater availability of broadband connectivity, as well as increased speeds on those connections. This is supported as well by the long-term trends observed over the five-year history of the State of the Internet Report. This combination of improved broadband availability and higher speeds opens the door for greater innovation in how the Internet is used by both businesses and individuals around the globe."

China and the United States were responsible for slightly more than 50 per cent of the total attack traffic.