In the fourth quarter of 2024, Cloudflare successfully mitigated the largest recorded DDoS attack, which peaked at an astonishing 5.6 terabits per second and lasted for only 80 seconds.

This unprecedented attack, which targeted an East Asia telecom firm, involved 13,000 unique IP addresses and surpassed the previous record of 3.8 terabits per second.

Throughout 2024, Cloudflare mitigated approximately 21.3 million DDoS attacks, marking a significant 53% increase from the previous year.

Notably, 12% of DDoS incidents in the fourth quarter included extortion demands, reflecting a 78% rise from the previous quarter.

Ransom DDoS attacks are on the rise, particularly affecting organizations in China, as adversaries threaten to disable services to extort money.

DDoS attack strategies are evolving, becoming shorter in duration but more intense and frequent, with many attacks concluding in under ten minutes.

In fact, 72% of HTTP DDoS attacks lasted less than ten minutes, complicating manual responses for organizations.

Among Cloudflare customers, 40% of those who identified their attackers suspected competitors, while 17% believed state-sponsored groups were involved.

During this period, Indonesia emerged as the largest source of DDoS attacks, with China being the most frequently targeted country.

The Murdoc Botnet, which exploits vulnerabilities in AVTECH cameras and Huawei routers, has been active since mid-2024, affecting over 1,500 IP addresses.

Cybersecurity firms have reported that various offshoots of the Mirai botnet are exploiting IoT device vulnerabilities to conduct DDoS attacks.

Cloudflare's advanced defense systems automatically detected and mitigated the recent DDoS attack without any human intervention, ensuring no performance degradation occurred.