In this final project video for CS50's Introduction to Cybersecurity, presenter Mostak Bari Fahim (GitHub: mostak-bari-fahim, edX: mostakbari-fahim) delivers a slide‑based analysis of a record‑setting increase in Distributed Denial‑of‑Service (DDoS) and ransomware activity during the last three months of 2024. Using two Security Week articles as sources, he outlines that an average of 4,870 DDoS attacks occurred per hour in 2024, with Cloudflare blocking roughly 21.3 million attacks—a 53 % rise from 2023. In Q4 2024, Cloudflare stopped 3.5 million HTTP‑layer attacks and 3.4 million L3/L4 attacks, 73 % of which were botnet‑driven (SYN, DNS, UDP floods, Mirai). The largest blocked attack was a 5.6 Tbps UDP flood lasting 80 seconds, sourced from 13,000 IPs. Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Singapore were the top origins, while China, the Philippines, and Taiwan were the most affected, especially internet and marketing firms. Ransomware activity peaked in December 2024, with NCC Group reporting over 570 incidents—the highest monthly total since 2021. The sector breakdown highlighted industrial, consumer discretionary, IT, finance, and healthcare. The group FunkSec accounted for ~18 % of the 574 attacks, with other actors including Clop, Akira, and RansomHub. Geographically, North America bore the brunt, followed by Europe and Asia. Fahim stresses that robust cybersecurity measures—firewalls, intrusion detection systems, regular backups, software updates, strong passwords, antivirus, and user education—are essential to mitigate these threats. He concludes with a call for heightened awareness and provides his email for further discussion.
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Hello everyone, I am Mostak Bari Fahim. I am making this video as a final project for the CS50's course of Introduction to Cybersecurity. My GitHub username is mostak-bari-fahim and my edX username is mostakbari-fahim, as you can see in the slide. Today is January 24, 2025, and I am gonna talk about the recent DDoS and ransomware attack which has set a record in the last 3 months of 2024. I have used 2 news articles from the Security Week as reference of this presentation. DDoS attack mostly occurred exploiting the vulnerabilities of the users. The issue of DDoS attack, which elaborated as distributed denial of service attacks, grew both in number and intensity. The adversaries are now attacking, breaking 3 to 4 layers of security, which increased in the last 4 months of 2024. In every hour, average 4,870 DDoS attacks happened in 2024. Cloudflare prevented approximately 21.3 million DDoS attacks in 2024, which is 53% more than the year of 2023. In the last 3 months of 2024, Cloudflare has, uh, blocked 3.5 million HTTP DDoS attack and 3.4 million Layer 3 and Layer 4 attack. Most of these attacks are being carried out by the botnets, spoofing, unusual HTTP attributes, etc. In the 73% of the cases, these attacks are being carried out by the botnets which can impersonate as browsers and have suspicious HTTP attributes. Method of this attacks includes SYN floods, DNS floods, UNP floods, and Mirai botnets. And the other method also used in this attack. The largest attack blocked in last three months of 2024 was a 5.6 terabit per second. UDP assault which was launched by Mirai botnet. This attack lasted 80 seconds and originated from 13,000 unique sources of IP addresses which contributed 1 gigabit per second each. During the last quarter of 2024, Indonesia was the largest source of these attacks, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. On the other hand, China was the number one victim of these attacks, followed by Philippines and Taiwan. The most affected organizations in these attacks are internet industry and marketing firms. Ransomware attacks are also violent as it corrupt files and the whole system. NCC Group, a renowned IT security company, has detected over 570 ransomware attacks only in December 2024. It is the highest number in a month since they started monitoring these attacks from 2021. Most of the ransomware attacks in December 2024 targeted industrial sector, consumer discretionary, IT, finance, and healthcare. From total 574 ransomware attacks in December 2024, a group named, named FunkSec is responsible for almost 100 attacks, which is 18% of the total number of the attacks. Fonseca is a group of inexperienced hackers involved both in hacktivism and cybercrimes. The other groups include Clop, Akira, and RansomHub. In the graph of this slide, we can see from, from, we can see from 2023 to 2024, the highest attacks Conducted in December 2024, more than half of these attacks targeted North American organizations, followed by Europe and Asia. Since 2021, in December, the frequency of these attacks are comparatively low than the other months. That can Maybe for the holiday. However, in this, in this year of 2024, in the year of 2024, the number of attacks in December is the highest, which indicates increasingly aggressive nature of ransomware threats. To properly address the DDoS and ransomware issues, robust Cybersecurity measures including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and data backups can help. Preventing these attacks are the best thing to protect our information and the data. Preventing these attacks can start with educating and empowering people. About cybersecurity issues, which also can include phishing, suspicious links, which can reduce vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Also, firewalls, antivirus softwares can increase the defenses of our system. Moreover, regular software update Regular system updates, creating secure passwords in the accounts can prevent our exposure to vulnerabilities. And everyone should back up their critical data on a regular basis to ensure rapid recovery upon any attack. Thank you for your attention. Let's be aware about the cybersecurity issues to create a more secure virtual world. Feel free to reach out for further discussion at my mail that is given here. Thank you very much.
