Price of website disabling DDoS attacks fall to US$38 per hour as botnets proliferate in China, Vietnam

It is becoming easier than ever to launch a potentially ruinously expensive, server disabling assault against any website as criminal organisations offer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks at cut price rates.

"Assaults against network infrastructures continue to grow in size and duration," the report said.

"The upshot for organisations of all sizes is that simply weathering the storm is no longer a viable strategy—the impact will be big, durable, and likely recurring."

Botnets are vast networks of computers and machines which have been infected by malware (often without the knowledge of their owners) allowing a hacker to control them, using the machines to send masses of spam email or launch DDoS attacks.

More than half (56 per cent) of all botnet traffic in the second quarter of 2015 emerged from China, Vietnam, the US, Brazil and Thailand, according to Incapsula. Nearly 15 per cent of application layer attacks – where a botnet targets a specific function on a website with the purpose of disabling it – originated in China, followed closely by Vietnam (13.8 per cent).