Bengaluru, Mar 27 (IANS): There was a 25 per cent decrease in the Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the fourth quarter of 2017 as compared to the third quarter, a new report said on Tuesday.

Verisign, a global leader in domain names and internet security, found that the largest volumetric and highest intensity DDoS attack observed by Verisign in the fourth quarter of 2017 was a multi-vector attack that peaked at approximately 53 Gbps and over 5 Mpps.

This attack sent a flood of traffic to the targeted network for about an hour, the company said in a statement.

A DDoS is a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infected with a Trojan, are used to target a single system.

The average peak attack size was 7.6 Gbps, which is 850 per cent increase compared to the third quarter but it is a 32 per cent year-over-year decrease as compared to the fourth quarter 2016.

Nearly, 40 per cent of the total attacks were over 5Gbps, the report said.

Verisign also observed that 25 per cent of customers who experienced DDoS attacks in the fourth quarter 2017 were targeted multiple times during the quarter.

Eighty-two per cent of DDoS attacks mitigated by Verisign in the fourth quarter employed multiple attack types.

Verisign observed attacks targeting networks at multiple layers and attack types that changed over the course of a DDoS event.