Hack Attacks Against Financial Firms Multiply In First Quarter Of 2012

China remains the top source country for attacks but the U.S. and Russia both moved up in the rankings.

Denial of Service attacks against financial companies increased threefold in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the fourth quarter of last year, according to Prolexic Technologies, a provider of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services.

According to a study the firm carried out, 5.7 quadrillion bits of data and 1.1 trillion malicious packets were identified in the first quarter of this year, representing a 3,000% increase in malicious packet traffic over Q4 2011, Prolexic reported.

There was also a 25% increase in total number of DDoS attacks over the last quarter of 2011, and a 25% increase in Layer 7 (application layer) attacks, the vendor said. China remains the top source country for attacks but the U.S. and Russia both moved up in the rankings.

Infrastructure layer attacks targeting Layer 3 and Layer 4 continued to be the choice of attackers, although this quarter showed a 6% increase in DDoS attacks targeting the application layer (Layer 7).

Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio