News
Hackers Descend on the G20 Summit in China, Conducting Over 133,000 Malicious Cyber Attacks
October 2016 by NSFOCUS
Cybersecurity discussions were a top priority at the G20 Summit 2016, a global economic leadership forum attended by world leaders from 20 major economies; yet the event itself encountered a staggering number of attempted cyber attacks between September 3-6. NSFOCUS, a global provider of intelligent hybrid security solutions, was commissioned by China’s Ministry of Public Security to provide 24x7 cybersecurity protection for networks and applications associated with the G20 Summit – successfully defending against 133,254 attacks targeting the G20 network.
“Securing an event of the size and prominence of G20 is an enormous undertaking,” said Dr. Richard Zhao, SVP of Global Threat Research, NSFOCUS. “Cybercrime is evolving with hackers moving beyond traditional attacks to more advanced threats, and geopolitical conferences are always an ideal target for malicious activity. In order to combat these threats and ensure the security of the summit, NSFOCUS took a holistic approach and implemented an integrated and layered security solution to protect the G20. As a result, the event carried on as planned, and the striking number of incoming attacks did not disrupt activities.”
During the event, NSFOCUS secured 12,728 web applications and key pages linked to the G20 Summit, while at the same time defending 359,830 other critical business systems owned by NSFOCUS customers. This is a testament that NSFOCUS is well prepared to protect these types of global events, while simultaneously protecting their own customers. The company provided 28 systems that delivered attack traffic scrubbing, intrusion prevention, and web application security, all of which were continually updated with NSFOCUS global Threat Intelligence. The NSFOCUS solutions included next generation IPS, anti-DDOS systems, remote security assessment systems, web application firewalls, and WebSafe SaaS, a cloud-managed service for web servers.
NSFOCUS noted further details of the cyber attacks, which include:
Beginning Sep. 1, NSFOCUS mitigated more than two million web attacks, including, 133,254 attacks targeting the G20 network.
NSFOCUS mitigated an additional 1.9 million attacks targeting organisations who provided other services to the G20 summit.
NSFOCUS defended against 1,984 DDoS attacks targeting the G20 network, protecting against 41.2 TB of total malicious traffic.
NSFOCUS guarded against 169,919 web attacks on G20 and G20-affiliated networks, and discovered 611,356 vulnerabilities, of which 190 were high-risk, prior to the start of the summit.
Attacks originating from the U.S., Russia, and Brazil were the most prevalent.
“During the course of the conference, NSFOCUS protected G20 assets and customers against a non-stop barrage of attacks,” Dr. Zhao continued. “Hundreds of thousands of attacks executed over the course of several days presents a significant danger to even the most secure network. It’s worrying, but not surprising, to see such a force unleashed on the summit. NSFOCUS is proud to have defeated these attacks on a key leadership forum like G20.”
NSFOCUS has a longstanding history of securing major global events such as The World Internet Conference, 29th Olympic Games, the Big Data Expo, and IAAF World Championships in Athletics.
