Os Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in Africa increased 300% in 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. The continent experienced a similar increase in February 2020, coinciding with global roadblocks related to COVID-19.
This is according to the pan-African ICT service provider Seacom, who added that with the unprecedented shift towards working online, cybercriminals had access to a larger attack surface and more vulnerable home networks.
Unfortunately, this increase in attacks shows no signs of slowing down, the company said.
“A DDoS attack is a type of cyber attack that targets servers and networks that take advantage of specific capacity limits on network resources. Attackers send multiple requests to a network, such as a company website, with the aim of overloading the network and saturating traffic volumes. This causes the network or services to stop working, making them inaccessible to normal users, as well as more vulnerable to new attacks,” said Seacom.
The company added that Africa experienced 382.500 DDoS attacks between January and July 2021. Of these, 59% were massive in Kenya and South Africa. Although South Africa suffered fewer attacks in 2021 than in 2020, there was still an increase a considerable 188% in attacks in 2021 compared to 2019.
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Kenya, on the other hand, saw an impressive 2.400% increase in attacks in 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. It is clear that the technology-focused nations of Kenya and South Africa are suffering the brunt of the attack . And, probably not surprising, the information services sector was particularly affected.
