Security News Pulse Wave - New DDoS Assault Pattern Discovered

[LASER_oneXM]

A new method of carrying out DDoS attacks named Pulse Wave is causing problems to certain DDoS mitigation solutions, allowing attackers to down servers previously thought to be secured.

Discovered by DDoS mitigation firm Imperva Incapsula, the name of this new technique comes from the look of its attack chart, shaped in the form of abrupt repeating pulses.

Classic attacks usually have the shape of a sloping triangle going up and down as an attacker slowly assembles bots and aims them at a desired targeted.

The new pulse wave attacks start from zero and go to maximum values in a very short time span, then go back to zero, and back to maximum, repeating in continuous cycles at short clocked intervals.

Pulse wave attacks cause problems to hybrid mitigation solutions
Pulse wave attacks have not been seen from different actors, but this is about to change. Experts say that these types of DDoS attacks can cause problems to "hybrid" mitigation solutions and are bound to become attractive to other botnet herders.

Hybrid mitigation solutions are a mixture between on-premise hardware and cloud-based solutions. The on-location hardware works as the default mitigation solution but is configured to trigger a customer's cloud-based DDoS protection whenever the equipment is about to get flooded with traffic.

This DDoS protection topology is suitable for dealing with classic DDoS attacks that build over time. Because pulse wave attacks come in fast and furious, the local equipment is quickly flooded, having no time, or the necessary bandwidth, to call for the cloud-based solution.