Web security firm Cloudflare has blocked the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever recorded.
The record-breaking attack clocked in at 11.5 Tbps, equivalent to more than 12,000 full-length HD movies flooding the web with unauthorised traffic.
The cyber attack was more than 50 per cent larger than the previous record of 7.3 Tbps, which Cloudflare described as “monumental” in June.
DDoS attacks are one of the most common forms of internet disruption, capable of knocking entire websites or web platforms offline.
They work by overloading servers with traffic from a group of bots known as a botnet, which is typically comprised of computers or web-connected devices that have been compromised by hackers.
These cyber assaults can last for hours, or even days, though the latest one recorded by Cloudflare only lasted for 35 seconds.
“Cloudflare's defenses have been working overtime,” the company said in a post to X.
“Over the past few weeks, we've autonomously blocked hundreds of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks, with the largest reaching peaks of 5.1 Bpps and 11.5 Tbps. The 11.5 Tbps attack was a UDP flood that mainly came from Google Cloud.”
Cloudflare has also logged an unprecedented volume of DDoS attacks this year, with the company registering a 358 per cent year-on-year jump.
One of the sources of the latest attack was from Google Cloud, while several other cloud providers were also used to carry out the assault.
“Defending against this class of attack is an ongoing priority for us, and we’ve deployed numerous strong defenses to keep users safe, including robust DDoS detection and mitigation capabilities,” a spokesperson for Google Cloud said.
“Our abuse defenses detected the attack, and we followed proper protocol in customer notification and response. Initial reports suggesting that the majority of traffic came from Google Cloud are not accurate.”
