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Police take DDoS attacks more seriously as they cover for something more sinister - expert comment
April 2016 by Mike Hulett, head of operations at the National Crime Agency’s Cybercrime Unit
To date, police have generally considered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to be a low-level crime. However, they are now starting to take them much more seriously. According to Mike Hulett, head of operations at the National Crime Agency’s Cybercrime Unit, DDoS attacks have risen up law enforcement’s agenda for a couple of reasons. Speaking at the Security & Counter Terror Expo in London he said: "This is something that I wouldn’t say law enforcement has ignored over the years, but it’s been seen as relatively low level. It’s a bit like swatting a fly, it’s an annoyance thing: ’We don’t really want to launch an investigation against it, do we?’" However, this approach has now changed because "something different is happening with DDoS", Hulett said, describing how previously, organisations could fend of DDoS attacks with relative ease, but now, they’re becoming more difficult to fight against.
Commenting on this, Alex Cruz Farmer, VP of cloud at NSFOCUS IB, said: “Having dealt with the National High Tech Crime Unit in the past, now known as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, it was clear that the government was trying its best with limited resources to get the skills and knowledge to begin the cyber fight. Like Mr. Hulett commented, the problem is very real, has to be taken seriously and it has not come soon enough. In my years of experience in carrier and service provider markets, where margins are low, and customer demands are high, DDoS attacks have significant affects on not just them but, in most cases, their entire customer base, creating a domino affect. What is often overlooked is the real cost of DDoS mitigation. To the government, the cost may seem an insignificant amount, but to a small £2-5m revenue business, it’s huge.”
