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MENA DDoS Attacks Surge 183% due to Hacktivism: Q1 2024

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Vusi Melane
Vusi Melane
Journalist, B2B Writer and Editor.

In the first quarter of 2024, DDoS attacks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region increased by 183% year-on-year, according to experts from StormWall. StormWall analyzed DDoS attacks against the company’s customers in the MENA region in Q1 2024 and shared its findings in a report.

Here are the key takeaways:


The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has fueled a surge in hacktivism (when political or social activists use computer technology to make a statement supporting one of their causes) in Q1 2024.

Government services

Government services bore the brunt of these attacks, accounting for 34% of all incidents in the region and experiencing a 218% year-over-year increase. The conflict escalated further with Iran’s direct attack on Israel on April 13, 2024, intensifying DDoS activity.

Energy Sector

The energy sector was the second most attacked vertical in Q1 2024, with an 18% share and a 206% year-over-year increase in attacks. Hackers focused on critical infrastructure, targeting supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and energy management systems (EMS) to disrupt operations and threaten business continuity.

Carpet bombing attacks

In Q1 2024, the average number of botnet nodes in the MENA region quadrupled from 4,000 to 16,000. This growth in botnet capacity enables attackers to launch more powerful DDoS attacks, particularly carpet-bombing attacks, which increased by 264% year-over-year. Carpet bombing attacks target a wide range of IP addresses within a network, saturating the entire infrastructure with traffic.

Most targeted regions and countries in MENA

The United Arab Emirates (21%), Saudi Arabia (18%), and Iran (14%) were the most targeted countries in the MENA region in Q1 2024. The high ranking of Iran and Israel (12%) once again highlights how prominent politically motivated attacks are in today’s DDoS threat landscape.

Attacks by protocol

Looking at the breakdown of attacks by protocol, 83% targeted the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Attacks on TCP and UDP protocols accounted for 10%, while DNS attacks saw a significant increase from 3% last year to 5% in Q1 2024.

Source: StormWall

 

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