Think you’re safe on the internet? Think again: Map reveals millions of cyber-attacks happening around the world in real time
A fascinating interactive map from security firm Norse serves as a stark reminder to just how dangerous the web can be.
The live graphic plots every attack taking place on the internet, in real-time and reveals the number of attacks, where the attacks originate, and which locations they are aimed at.
Norse’s interactive live map, allows viewers to watch as live attacks unfold around the world. The most popular target seems to be the U.S., with many attacks originating in China. At certain times, a large attack will take place when hackers try to take a website offline, known as a DDoS attack. The map was designed to work in Chrome and loading times may vary depending on your browser.
What is a DDoS attack?
DDoS stands for ‘Distributed denial-of-service’ attack, when attacker use a network of ‘zombie’ computers to sabotage a specific Web site or server. The idea is pretty simple – a attacker tells all the computers on his botnet to contact a specific server or web site repeatedly.
The sudden increase in traffic can cause the site to load very slowly for legitimate users. Sometimes the traffic is enough to shut the site down completely.
The data is sourced from a network of “honeypot” servers maintained by Norse, rather than real-world data from the Pentagon, Google, or other high-profile attacking targets.
If you watch the map for a little while, it’s clear that most attacks originate in either China or the US, and that the US is by far the largest target for attacks. ‘Every second, Norse collects and analyses live threat intelligence from darknets in hundreds of locations in over 40 countries,’ the company wrote. A darknet being a private network.
Here are some facts about cyber-attacks around the world:
The U.S. Department of Defense announced it was subjected to 10 million cyber-attacks a day in 2012.
While the National Nuclear Security Administration, in charge of America’s nuclear stockpile, also saw 10 million attacks per day in 2013, while the UK in total reported 120,000 daily attacks in 2011.
Earlier this month, a security report by security firm McAfee found that cybercrime is now such big business, it is worth more than the wealth of some countries. As a business, cybercrime would be ranked 27th in the world based on revenue, and the attacks are currently costing the world more than £238 billion ($400 billion) a year.
