Hacker attacks increase 8.8% in Brazil and the country remains the 2nd most attacked in the world

The largest country in Latin America continues to be the main target of hacker attacks on the continent and one of the main ones on the global panorama. Brazil suffered 357,422 attacks in the second half of 2023, compared to 328,326 in the first half of last year — an increase of 8.86%.

Among the main sectors affected in Brazil in the period, wireless telecommunications continues to lead with 82,065 attacks, an increase of 142.47% compared to the first half of 2023, when 33,846 attacks were recorded. Cargo transportation continues to be in the top 3, with 25,620 records, and data processing, with 25,130, with few changes since the last report.

The data comes from the most recent Threat Intelligence Report from NetScout, which is the global leader in cybersecurity solutions, released this week.

The average duration of each attack is 29 minutes, which is how long criminals spend on the hacked system.

Compared to other countries in Latin America, Brazil suffered around 4.3 times more attacks than Argentina, in second place, with 82,749 attacks, and around 4.6 times more than Peru, third most attacked, with 74,531.

Globally, Brazil is the second country in the world with the most attacks, behind only the United States, with 1,168,456 attacks; and South Korea in third, with 333,516 registrations.

The report points out the 26 different attack vectors used: TCP ACK, DNS amplification, TCP RST, TCP SYN/ACK amplification and ICMP.

According to the reporting company, the information in the document is gathered from NetScout's unprecedented internet visibility on a global scale, collecting, analyzing, prioritizing and disseminating data on DDoS attacks from 214 countries and territories, 456 industry verticals and more of 13,000 Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs).

DDoS attacks aim to make a system unavailable for some purpose to hackers.