Cloudflare noted a sharp increase in DDoS attacks in the third quarter of 2024. The company reported having mitigated nearly six million attacks.
Cloudflare releases a report on DDoS attacks after each quarter. For several quarters in a row, it has seen a consistent trend: DDoS attacks are increasing, both in number and size. In the third quarter of 2024, DDoS had to intervene in six million DDoS attacks. This is an increase of 49 percent from the previous quarter and 55 percent year-on-year, according to Cloudflare.
Hypervolumetric
Cloudflare reported more than 200 hypervolumetric DDoS attacks in Q3 2024. These attacks reached speeds of more than 3 terabits per second (Tbps) and two billion packets per second (Bpps). The largest attack peaked at 4.2 Tbps and lasted only a minute. The total number of attacks in 2024 so far comes to 14.5 million, which is an average of 2,200 attacks per hour.
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6 million DDoS attacks in the third quarter of 2024
The financial sector was the most frequent target of these attacks, followed by the IT services sector. In terms of geographic distribution, China was the most attacked location, while Indonesia was the largest source of DDoS attacks. The United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore and Germany were also among the hardest-hit regions.
Half of the attacks detected in Q3 were network layer DDoS attacks, which increased 51 percent from the previous quarter. HTTP attacks at the application layer increased 61 percent. Hypervolumetric attacks, which reach speeds of 1 Tbps or higher, pose a serious challenge, especially given their short but powerful impact. A slight increase was observed in attacks lasting longer than an hour.
The main attack vectors at the network layer were SYN flood attacks, followed by DNS floods and UDP floods. At the application layer level, 72 percent of the attacks were carried out by known botnets, which were automatically mitigated by Cloudflare’s heuristics. Attacks with suspicious HTTP attributes or executed by fake browsers accounted for 13 and 9 percent of the attacks, respectively.
Increasing danger
Cloudflare highlights the growing danger of hypervolumetric DDoS attacks, which can damage Internet resources at high peak speeds. Geopolitical tensions and advanced botnets increase the risk to a wide range of organizations, which increasingly must guard against these threats.
The report points out that a proactive approach and well-prepared security strategies are essential to remain resilient against these cyber threats. Those wishing to dive into the full report can read it here.