Did you know? Thousands of websites are hacked every day due to vulnerable files, plugins, and their servers’ misconfiguration. This is why, as a website owner or administrator, you must regularly perform a security scan of your site to check for vulnerabilities and malware. Another prudent step to take is to check out real-time cyber-attack maps. These maps offer insight into cyber attacks taking place around the world. By keeping an eye on these maps, you will learn more about ongoing attacks, follow trends, and subsequently update your website’s security measures accordingly.
In this article, we will examine five of the best online maps you can use to track cyberattacks around the globe.
Arbor Networks DDoS Attack Map
The Arbor Networks map is dedicated to recording DDoS attacks worldwide. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. It’s a virulent attempt to disturb the usual internet traffic of a specific server by flooding it with traffic from a variety of sources. This creates something akin to a traffic jam, preventing internet users from publishing and accessing important information.
Arbor gathers and presents data from a worldwide analysis of over 300 ISPs and over 130 Tbps of live traffic. The statistics on the map are updated hourly, but you can also look at historical data sets. Features of this map include:
- Statistics by country
- The source and destination of attacks
- Multiple types of attacks, such as large, uncommon, combined, etc.
- Attacks color-coded by type, source port, duration, and destination port
- The size of the DDoS attack in Gbps
- An embed code that allows you to add this map to your website
- The ability to sort by TCP connection, volumetric, fragmentation, and application
The information from this map can also be used in creating your own personalized map. For instance, if you wanted to track the DDoS attacks in your area, you could take this information from Arbor and plot it out using a multi-stop route planner.
Kaspersky Cyber Malware and DDoS Real-Time Map
Kaspersky is a comprehensive map that shows you both DDoS attacks and cyber malware attacks. A cyber malware attack is an incursion where malicious software performs unauthorized actions on your system. A malware attack can take many forms, including ransomware, spyware, and command and control.
The Kaspersky map can detect your current location. It will then display statistics for your country, including the top local attacks and infections from the previous week. It utilizes a variety of data sources, including on-demand scans, botnet activity detection, and mail-anti-virus to detect attacks. Furthermore, Kaspersky allows you to view historical data sets, including the top threat types and the most infected countries.
Fortinet Threat Map
This map provides information on malicious network activity within multiple geographic regions. Malicious network activity is a threat to your system that comes from a link, file, or connection being created or received by your network. This type of attack can compromise your website’s security.
In addition to malicious network activity Fortinet also displays various international sources of attack and their targets. This map is not as visually appealing as some of the other maps on our list, but the information is easy to comprehend. The map displays general live attack activity in order of attack type, severity, and geographic location. Additionally, you can view a day/night map.
Fortinet allows you to click on a country name to view statistics for incoming and outgoing attacks, in addition to overall activity for the country. The map has a variety of colors, each one representing a different type of attack. The color-coded attacks include remote execution attacks, memory-related attacks, remote location attacks, DoS attacks, and generic attacks.
LookingGlass Real-Time Map
This map aims to display live activity for infected, malicious, and phishing domain URLs. These URLs are designed to promote scams, frauds, and attacks. If you click on one of these URLs, you may inadvertently download malware or a Trojan or be persuaded to give out sensitive information.
LookingGlass displays real-time data from threat intelligence feeds. These feeds include an infections record data feed, a malicious URL data feed, and a phishing URL data feed. When you load the map, you will see four columns. These columns show the results for infections per second, live attacks, botnets involved, and the total number of affected countries. If you click on a location on the map, you will receive further details about the malicious incident. These details include information on time, ASN, organization, and country code.
Sophos Map
Unlike the other maps on our list, the Sophos map is not a real-time map. It is a static threat tracking map with data from the SophosLabs monitoring and malware research activities.
The Sophos Map displays threats in three central graphics: Today’s Malicious Web Requests, Today’s Blocked Malware, and Today’s Web Threats. It also has a Threat Geography map that lets you find out more information about spam issues on an affected location. For instance it will show you infected websites, (including the malware/virus name), the spam source, (including subject, source IP, and exact location), and the email malware source, (including subject, source IP, and exact location).
Talos Spam and Malware Map
This free attack map reports threats that have been detected by Talos’ attack sensors as well as attacks reported by third party feeds. Users can sort the top 10 cyber attack sender lists by country, in addition to sorting by top malware senders. Furthermore, additional information can be found about senders by clicking their names. This information includes their exact IP address, the hostname, the reputation status, and the last day of detection.
Summary
Cyber attacks, as well as malware and spam infections, are increasing at an alarming rate. While the maps we’ve looked at won’t diminish these malicious activities, it’s useful to know about the real-time threats happening around us. More importantly, however, you must take steps to protect your site from malicious attacks. These steps include investing in an SSL certificate and using antivirus and antispyware software on your computers.
