Predicting Future Trends in Malicious Server Attacks

by Daniel Whitcomb

Submitted : Spring 2015

Websites generate traffic from both good and malicious parties. These malicious parties often try to exploit vulnerabilities in the website’s code (“How Hackers Target and Hack Your Site”). It is then beneficial to be able to judge whether the rate of these attempts are increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. Loricca kept statistics of all traffic incoming toward the website. It was then possible to determine whether the overall rate of traffic was increasing. Furthermore, it was possible to determine whether the overall rate of malicious traffic is changing based on the total traffic. At first, the overall amount of traffic per month in 2014 was plotted onto a graph. From this a trendline was established. It was determined that the overall amount of traffic for 2014 was increasing. After determining the number of malicious attacks in each month, that was plotted on a graph as well. This was also determined to have increased as the year went on. Finally, the percentage of malicious attacks out of the total number of traffic was determined and plotted on a graph. This curve represented the function of these malicious attacks and could be used to describe the rate of growth as well as the direction of growth. The graph suggested that the percentage of malicious attacks decreased throughout the year, and that the malicious attacks in respect to total visits was decreasing.

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