- Web attacks rose by 33% year-over-year, totaling 311 billion incidents in 2024.
- Akamai (AKAM, Financial) documented 150 billion API attacks from January 2023 through December 2024.
- Layer 7 DDoS attacks increased by 94% year-over-year, impacting the high technology sector.
Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), a leader in cybersecurity and cloud computing, has released its State of the Internet (SOTI) report, highlighting significant cybersecurity trends in 2024. The report shows a 33% year-over-year increase in web attacks, totaling 311 billion incidents. This rise correlates with the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), which has expanded attack surfaces.
The report identifies APIs as primary targets, recording 150 billion API attacks over two years. The surge in these attacks is linked to the rapid growth of AI applications that integrate through APIs, often with insufficient authentication protocols. This vulnerability is exacerbated by the sophistication of AI-powered attacks targeting these APIs.
Significantly, Layer 7 DDoS attacks grew by 94% year-over-year from Q1 2023 to Q4 2024. Monthly attacks rose from 500 billion to 1.1 trillion by December 2024, driven by bot-driven tactics and HTTPS flooding.
The commerce sector was particularly affected, facing over 230 billion web attacks, nearly three times more than the next most-targeted sector, high technology, which endured 7 trillion Layer 7 DDoS attacks during the period.
Additional findings include a 32% rise in OWASP API Security Top 10-related incidents, revealing persistent authentication and authorization weaknesses, and a 30% increase in MITRE security framework alerts, indicating attackers leveraging AI and automation to exploit these vulnerabilities.
This is the 11th year of Akamai's SOTI reports, providing expert analysis and insights on evolving cybersecurity threats. Akamai's data is based on processing over one-third of global web traffic, positioning them uniquely to address the intersections of AI and security in today's threat landscape.
