Largest DDoS attacks ever recorded

As companies position themselves in the virtual environment, the number of attacks and network intrusion attempts is growing. Generally, the most prominent targets are web servers, in which the attack generates an intense demand for network traffic, making sites and applications inaccessible.

This article revolves around DDoS and the 5 largest attacks ever recorded. Check it out!

DDoS attacks: concepts and characteristics

The distributed denial of service attack aims to generate network overload and make the computational resources of a system unavailable, which can cause severe financial losses to the target company through a number of ways:

• Flooding attacks: sending hundreds of thousands or even millions of packets per second to saturate the processing of the target equipment.
• Amplification attacks: using poorly setup devices on the internet to make them respond to requests simultaneously, forging the target’s address as the source of the request, thus saturating the target’s network.
• Protocol exploitation attacks: These attacks can blend in part with amplification but use flaws in protocols to saturate some of the target’s resources (network or processing). In addition to the above, they can be used to bypass target protections.

The 5 largest DDoS attacks

Those working in network infrastructure face a number of challenges in ensuring network protection due to the constant growth of DDoS attacks. Here are the largest attacks ever recorded:

Azure, 2021: in November this year Microsoft recorded a DDoS attack for a customer of its cloud framework in Asia, with a volume of 3.47 Tbps and a rate of 340 Mpps.

Google, 2017: this year Google faced a major network attack, comprising 2.54 Tbps per second. The attack was targeted at its cloud service.

ASW, 2020: Amazon disclosed that it performed mitigation of a large DDoS attack, which at its peak, triggered traffic of 2.3 Tbps. The offenders used hijacked web servers to carry out the attack.

Miraidyn, 2016: this attack targeted a DNS provider called Dyn and reached 1.5 Tbps per second; services from major companies such as Netflix, PayPal, AirBnb, Visa The New York Times, and others were down.

Github, 2018: the development platform suffered for several days a DDoS attack that reached a load of 1.35 Tbps. It was politically motivated and targeted two specific projects on GitHub created to circumvent censorship in China.

These attacks are considered to have a major impact on a global scale. However, there are many companies that face small attacks on their systems and networks gradually and in some cases constantly.

Learn how to protect your network

A DDoS attack generates network overload, bringing down websites, web pages, and causing the unavailability of services and applications. To prevent your systems from attacks, rely on a company specialized in protecting network infrastructures and DDoS mitigation.

UPX has the best solutions on the market and offers qualified support to identify intrusions and virtual DDoS attacks promoting more effective actions to protect operating systems and servers.

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