China, U.S. lead in Internet attack traffic in Q4 2014 (Photo : Reuters)
A vast majority of all Q4 (fourth quarter) Internet attack traffic in 2014 originated in China, with the U.S. ranking second, reports Akamai. In fact, the two countries were the only ones in which over 10 percent of attack traffic started, with Taiwan a distant third at 4.4 percent. .
Nevertheless, from Q3 of 2014, the attack traffic originating from China dropped a moderate 49 percent to 41 percent. Meanwhile, attack traffic starting from the U.S. also decreased from 17 percent to 13 percent.
The cloud service provider Akamai monitors attack traffic to protect its business interests, and then periodically releases its "State of the Internet" Report. The company's customers include tech giants such as Yahoo, ESPN, and IBM, according to Computer World.
However, not all the figures included decreases. For example, the number of attacks termed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) actually increased more than 20 percent in last year's Q4. Also, the 2014 total of 1,150 DDoS attacks in 2014 was only three fewer than in 2013.
The steepest increase in DDoS attacks occurred in the public sector. That figure rose from 22 to 38 during the last quarter of 2014. In fact, four of five DDoS sectors had more attacks during that time period.
Most of the DDoS attacks were targeted at North, Central, and South America, with a total of 177 strikes. The Asia-Pacific region ranked second with 98 targeted attacks.
Finally, the report from Akamai also included several other topics, including worldwide Web connection speeds. The worldwide average speed increased .7 percent from Q3, to 4.5 Mbps (megabits per second). South Korea (22.2. Mbps), Hong Kong (16.8 Mbps), and Japan (15.2 Mbps) topped the list, respectively.
Akamai Technologies is headquartered in Massachusetts, USA and was founded in 1998.It is the worldwide leader in CDN (Content Delivery Network) services, according to PR Newswire.
