Application layer DDoS attacks are becoming more common, perhaps because they cost less for malicious actors to execute and can more effectively evade defenses than network layer attacks, Imperva says.

One such attack generated 8.7Gbps at its peak, “unheard of in relation to application layer assaults,” in an effort to thread its way through the DDoS mitigations that had been set up to defend against such attacks, according to Imperva’s “DDoS Threat Landscape Report 2015-2016” released today.

Application layer attacks can be measured in responses per second required from the application targeted, and they generally require less volume than network layer attacks to succeed, the report says. That means they require fewer botnet resources, if botnets are the platform from which the attack is launched.