I remember the first time I sat down in a statistics class at Concordia University in Montreal as it was a requirement for my undergrad Science degree, so I was there by force, so to speak. The professor entered the room, told us his name and a little about his professional background. Once the introduction was finished he said with a booming voice “Statistics are lies and damned lies “ …I never forgot that statement and it also made me really pay attention in class. I soon learned that line is used fairly frequently by teachers teaching statistics.
Ok so what does this have to do with DDoS attacks? I was asked last week if I had any comments on the story carried by Yahoo Finance, Singapore. Where the headline read “1 in 2 online attacks in Asia Pacific targeted Singapore” my reaction was, really! The story goes on to quote various other exciting statistics from Akamai’s “ State of the Internet” A report based on stats from Prolexic and Akamai customers. I mean, right off the bat, Akamai’s “State of The Internet”! Complete with graphic of a hand holding the world.
I went through the, dare I say, “State of the Internet Report” and there it was stating that nearly 50% of all attacks in the Asia pacific region were on Financial institutions and the government websites in Singapore. My comments on the whole thing were pretty simple. How many websites in the Asia pacific region does Akamai have and in which countries? My guess is not many in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. Which we see malicious traffic from all the time, in fact malicious traffic originating from Singapore isn’t even on our radar. I’m not saying that malicious source traffic and target victims have any correlation.
What I am saying is, without all the information on the sample size and its distribution (what countries and how many websites in each country does Akamai have) then you are just fooling yourself. I normally drink 2 beers a day but yesterday I had 3 beers, next thing you know I pick up my local newspaper and
See a headline Teolis’ Alcohol consumption jumps 50% in 24 hours.
Mark Teolis
General Manager for DOSarrest Internet Security
