Akamai catches 418Gbps DDoS attack

Content delivery network and cybersecurity firm Akamai claims it blocked world's largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever, at least in terms of packets per second. The attack occurred on June 21 and targeted a bank with a huge peak load of 809 million packets per second (PPS), with traffic levels of 418Gbps. In total, the attack lasted just under 10 minutes.

"The attack grew from normal traffic levels to 418Gbps in seconds, before reaching its peak size of 809Mpps in approximately two minutes," Akamai said. "In total, the attack lasted slightly less than 10 minutes."

For what it's worth, Amazon Web Services claimed in May it mitigated a 2.3Tbps flood against a target, though Akamai claims it stopped a larger attack, in terms of packets per second.

Akamai says the attack was unusual in various ways, including the fact that 96.2 percent of source IPs were observed for the first time. This means most PCs that were part of the botnet that was used for this attack had never been used for this purpose before.

Via: The Register