DDoS attacks increased 83 percent to more than 182,900 attacks in the second quarter of the year, according to Nexusguard.

The newest report shows that Russia has become the No. 1 victim country. Starlink – a Russian ISP supporting small, medium and large enterprises – received more than 40 percent of the DDoS attacks measured over a two-day period. This targeted DNS attack also pushed the mean average DDoS duration to hours instead of minutes, as measured in the previous quarter.

Nexusguard’s researchers attributed this increase to nationalist hacktivists organizing a targeted attack to take out Russian businesses, rather than outbreaks driven by popular DDoS-for-hire activity.

“We were surprised to see an increase in DDoS attacks this quarter, especially as hackers experiment with ransomware, phishing schemes and other data-grabbing methods for monetary gain,” said Terrence Gareau, chief scientist at Nexusguard.