Quote:Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks dropped significantly at the end of 2020, down 31 percent in the fourth quarter, according to researchers. The reason? Cybercriminals have switched their efforts (and their botnets) to cryptomining.
 
According to an analysis from Kaspersky published Tuesday, cybercriminals began repurposing infected devices for cryptomining in response to rising cryptocurrency values.

“A surge in cryptocurrency costs may have prompted cybercriminals to re-profile some botnets so that the command-and-control (C2) servers typically used in DDoS attacks could repurpose infected devices and use their computing power to mine cryptocurrencies instead,” researchers said.

DDoS of course didn’t go away – as people spent more time online in 2020, researchers observed a corresponding spike in DDoS attacks for most of the year. And in the fourth quarter, attacks schools in Sandwich and Tyngsboro, Mass., Telenor Norway and Laurentian University in Canada, according to Kaspersky. Online gaming services also continued to suffer DDoS attacks during the analyzed period.

“The number of DDoS attacks was still 10 percent higher than the same period the year before, but overall reflected a declining trend, after attacks spiked dramatically in response to global lockdown measures earlier in the year,” analysis explained.