Many of my daily business contacts are in Europe, and a large percentage of those are in Germany.
During a conversation with the CTO of one of the largest German Venture Capital firms that invest in and consult with internet start-ups, he remarked that he was “not surprised” by relatively high DDOS and other attacks in Germany.
As someone who has suffered through the havoc caused by a DDoS attack or two, he also understood why newer IT managers might feel complacent if they haven’t experienced first-hand the frustration and downtime these attacks cause.
“Always-on” internet-connected (broadband) computers are of course also easier to use in DDoS attacks. It is not surprising that the concentration of attacks from German computers (and targeted at German companies), as well as the high number of German bot-infected computers, parallels the relatively high number of broadband users in Germany.
Symantec has been publishing reports on Global and Regional Internet Threats for nearly a decade.
You can get to Symantec’s full reports for the past 5 years and check various year’s findings via this link:
http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=threatreport
Some highlights –
* 1st and 2nd halves of 2005 saw Germany’s rank in origins of DDoS attacks fluctuate between 2nd and 4th in the world.
(P. 42 of the March 2006 world report covering the second half of 2005.)
ent-whitepaper_symantec_internet_security_threat_report_ix
(I think the rise in China’s internet users bumped Germany down in the chart)
Here’s a telling report:
ent-whitepaper_internet_security_threat_report_xii_emea_09_2007en-us
Highlights:
* This threat report for the EMEA region, statistics taken in 2007 shows:
p. 7 Germany as #5 (down from #4) in countries of origin of overall attacks
p. 8 Germany as #2 country in this EMEA region targeted by DoS attacks
p. 12 Germany listed as # 1 among the EMEA region’s countries with Bot-infected computers.
p.16 Germany as #1 in Malicious activity
p 18 Germany as #4 in malicious activity per user..
and p. 36 with Germany again #1 in Spam zombie countries and #2 most Bot-infected computers in the region..
