Cyberattacks On Indian Websites Surge 261% YoY In Q1 2024: Report

Cyberattacks on Indian websites surged 261% year-on-year (YoY) in the first quarter (Q1) of calendar year 2024 (CY24), as per a report by security SaaS firm Indusface. 

India took the top spot on the list of 95 countries that witnessed the most DDoS (distributed denial of service) and bot attacks. In contrast, cyberattacks globally rose 76% YoY during the period. 

As per the report, the websites of the Indusface’s Indian customers faced 180 Cr cyberattacks during the period under review. This came largely on the back of threat actors increasingly targeting less regulated industries for ransom. 

The revelations were part of a report released by Indusface on the analysis of 180 Cr cyberattacks blocked by its AppTrana WAAP platform. The company tracked the data of its more than 5,000+ customers spanning 95 countries.

“A 2.5X increase in attacks on Indian applications is a matter of great concern. Compared to last year, we are also seeing more attacks on unregulated industries such as power and manufacturing. Consistent with global trends, DDoS and bots continue to be the top two threat vectors employed by attackers in India,” said Indusface cofounder and CEO Ashish Tandon.

As per the report, DDoS and bot attacks surged 76% YoY and 147% YoY globally between January 2024 and March 2024. 

For the uninitiated, a DDoS attack is a cyberattack that tries to disrupt a server or network by flooding it with too much traffic whereas a bot attack uses automated scripts to harm a website, such as by stealing data or making fake purchases. 

Giving a sector-wise breakdown of the data, the report titled ‘State of Application Security’ also noted that companies from critical power and energy sectors faced as many as 500 times more attacks than the industry average. 

Banking, finance and insurance were the most targeted sectors overall, as per Indusface data. 

Most industries fell prey to DDoS as it was the prominent attack method used. However, bot attacks were used more heavily to target industries such as retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.

The document also shed light on the trend that banking and finance sectors faced 4X more encoding attacks and 3X more HTTP protocol enforcement attacks compared to other industries. 

The data comes at a time when multiple big ticket Indian startups and companies have fallen prey to cyberattacks. In 2023, the likes of furniture rental startup Rentomojo, rail ticketing app RailYatri, and stock broker AngelOne suffered data breaches.

Taj Hotels suffered a major breach in December last year, which allegedly exposed the personal information of 1.5 Mn customers.

In March this year, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) also warned of a new security vulnerability that could put scores of Google Chrome users in India at risk of attack by hackers.

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