Bengaluru, Sep 28 (IANS): The number of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks declined 55 per cent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to the first quarter globally, a new report said on Thursday.

According to the global Internet security firm Verisign, the average attack peak size also decreased by 81 per cent in the quarter.

The report said the DDoS attacks remained unpredictable, persistent and varied widely in terms of volume, speed and complexity. 

Around 50 per cent of customers who experienced the attacks were targeted multiple times during the quarter.

Verisign said that 74 per cent of DDoS attacks it mitigated employed multiple attack types.

"User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood attacks dominated in the quarter, making up 57 per cent of total attacks. The most common UDP floods included Domain Name System (DNS), Network Time Protocol (NTP), Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP), and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) reflective amplification attacks," the report noted.

IT (52 per cent) and financial sector (31 per cent) continued to be the consistent target of the attacks.