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| Microsoft mitigates the largest DDoS attack ever |
Microsoft said it was able to mitigate DDoS attacks to 2.4 terabytes per second in August.
The attack targeted Azure customers in Europe, up 140% from the software giant's higher attack bandwidth in 2020.
It also broke peak traffic of 2.3 terabytes per second, the largest attack on Amazon Web Services in the past year.
The company said the attack lasted more than 10 minutes, with short bursts of traffic reaching 2.4 terabytes per second, 0.55 terabytes per second, and 1.7 terabytes per second.
DDoS attacks are commonly used to force websites or services to go offline. This is due to the influx of traffic that the web host cannot handle.
This is usually done via a botnet, a network of devices that malware has infiltrated for remote control.
Azure was able to stay online during the attack. This is due to its ability to adapt to DDoS attacks with tens of terabytes of traffic per second.
“The attack traffic came from about 70,000 sources,” said Amir Dahan, senior project manager on the Microsoft Azure Networking team. It covers many countries in the Asia Pacific region. Such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, China as well as the United States.
The number of DDoS attacks against Azure increased in 2021. Prior to the 2.4 Mbit/s attack, the maximum attack traffic size was reduced to 625 Mbit/s.
It can support Microsoft Azure 2.4 Tbps
The company did not name its target Azure customers in Europe. However, this type of attack can also act as a cover for secondary attacks that try to spread malware and infiltrate company systems.
Amazon Web Services previously held a record for blocking the largest DDoS attacks. The attempt at 2.3 terabytes per second beat the previous record of 1.7 terabytes per second. Managed by NetScout Arbor since March 2018.
An attack of this magnitude proves that the actors are capable of causing massive damage. It does this by flooding the destination with heavy traffic to limit network capacity.