Cloudflare is again seeing the number of DDoS attacks rise to record highs. In addition, a new record attempt was intercepted by the company.
Cloudflare reports a sharp increase in DDoS attacks in the fourth quarter of 2024. The Internet company has come to this conclusion for many quarters in a row. The number of attacks that exceeded a capacity of 1 terabit per second (Tbps) increased another 1,885 percent from the previous quarter. In addition, the largest DDoS attack ever was reported, peaking at 5.6 Tbps.
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Record-breaking attack
Cloudflare detected and blocked an average of 4,870 DDoS attacks per hour in 2024, accounting for a total of 21.3 million attacks over the entire year. This represents a 53 percent increase over 2023. In the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, 6.9 million attacks were mitigated, up 16 percent from the previous quarter and 83 percent compared to a year earlier.
One notable development was the exponential increase in hypervolumetric attacks. In the fourth quarter, 420 attacks exceeded a rate of 1 billion packets per second (pps) or 1 Tbps. A record-breaking attack also seems to take place every quarter.
The most extreme attack peaked at 5.6 Tbps and targeted an Internet service provider in East Asia. The attack, originating from a Mirai-variant botnet with 13,000 IoT devices, lasted only 80 seconds. Cloudflare’s defense system detected and neutralized the attack completely autonomously.
Netherlands severely affected
The Netherlands saw a 117 percent increase in network layer DDoS traffic in the fourth quarter. About 4 of every 10,000 bytes and 6 of every 10,000 IP packets that reached the Netherlands were part of a DDoS attack. China remained the most attacked country. At the industry level, telecom companies, service providers and carriers were targeted most often, followed by the Internet sector and marketing companies.
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Nearly half of all DDoS attacks (49 percent) involved Layer 3/Layer 4 attacks, while 51 percent were HTTP attacks. More than 70 percent of HTTP attacks came from known botnets. A smaller portion of the attacks impersonated legitimate browsers or contained anomalous HTTP attributes.
Cloudflare emphasizes that the threat of DDoS attacks continues to grow. The growth of volumetric attacks and the scale of botnets underscore the importance of advanced detection and mitigation techniques.