Cloudflare has experienced perhaps one of the most striking examples of cyber attacks threatening the digital world.The company, which undertakes DDoS protection, internet security and domain name server duties for hundreds of sites, has survived one of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded.
Cloudflare managed to block a 3.8 Tbps attack
Cloudflare announced that it successfully fended off one of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded. The attack targeted multiple Cloudflare customers in the financial services, internet and telecommunications industries. Accordingly, malicious traffic flow of 3.8 terabits per second (Tbps) was blocked.
The attack was part of a month-long series of “hyper-volume” layer 3 and 4 DDoS attacks that exceeded 2 billion packets per second, aimed at bringing down network infrastructure and stealing resources. Cloudflare’s autonomous defense systems were able to neutralize the 3.8 Tbps attack in as little as 55 seconds.
Customer websites and services were able to continue operating normally without any interruption. Cloudflare said its global network infrastructure and intelligent filtering systems played an important role in its ability to withstand this massive influx of traffic.
According to the company’s analysis, the attacks originated from thousands of compromised consumer devices around the world. These included microtic routers, DVRs and web servers. The majority of the traffic originated from ASUS routers, which were exploited through a recently discovered vulnerability.
This incident highlights the increasing scale of DDoS threats. It also demonstrates the importance of timely patching of vulnerabilities targeting technological devices.