Indian websites witnessed a jump of 261 per cent in cyberattacks in the first quarter of 2024 compared to Q1 CY23, according to a report released on Monday by application security firm Indusface. Globally, the rise during the same period was 76 per cent.
The report, titled “State of Application Security” by Indusface, revealed that power and energy companies faced up to 500 times higher number of attacks than the industry average. This was because hackers and threat actors were found to be targeting less regulated industries in an attempt to charge heavy ransom, said the report.
“A 2.5x increase in attacks on Indian applications is a matter of great concern. Compared to last year, we are also seeing more attacks on unregulated industries such as power and manufacturing. Consistent with global trends, DDoS and bot continue to be the top two threat vectors employed by attackers in India,” said Ashish Tandon, founder and chief executive officer, Indusface.
According to the report, the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks increased by 76 per cent in the first three months of 2024, compared to Q1 CY23.
DDoS is a cyberattack methodology where the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites.
In most industries, DDoS came out to be the prominent attack vector except retail, manufacturing, and healthcare, where bot attacks were more prevalent.
The top DDoS attack origin countries were India, the United States, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands.
In terms of bot attacks, India, the US, Germany, and Japan were some of the major countries from where the maximum bot attacks were generated.
“Bot attacks are spreading rapidly with 100 per cent of healthcare apps and 90 per cent of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector apps witnessing a bot attack throughout the quarter. Overall, bot attacks rose 147 per cent compared to Q1 CY23,” said the report.
Around 9 out of 10 BFSI sites experienced bot attacks across the world, the report found.
In the BFSI sector, hackers were also found to be using evasion techniques to bypass security measures and probe into sensitive data, leading to four times higher encoding attacks in the sector.
First Published: Jun 17 2024 | 5:33 PM IST
