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(Image credit: Getty Images) Share Share by: Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have become an unfortunate routine part of the modern internet, with botnets of compromised devices spreading ever wider. Unfortunately, the scale and frequency of those attacks have also been rising. The Aisuru-Kimwolf botnet recently smashed its previous record, hitting 31.4 Tb/s in December. To put it into perspective, that's bandwidth enough to stream nearly 2.2 million Netflix 4K movies at once.
An attack of that dimension is enough to easily knock many internet service providers offline, if not entire countries. In a blog post (via BleepingComputer ), Cloudflare calls it an "unprecedented bombardment" targeting its customers, dashboard, and infrastructure. The company notes that these attacks are performed in a "hit-and-run" fashion, with gigantic bursts of traffic hitting everywhere at once, lasting from a few seconds to minutes.
Cloudflare also notes that the potential attack size grew by 7x in a single year, thanks to the growth of the Aisuru and Kimwolf botnets. Aisuru is considered the "parent" botnet and comprises small, internet-connected devices such as IoT equipment, DVRs, and even virtual machines on hosting services. Aisuru's devices reportedly live primarily in the U.S. The botnet grows by gaining access to new devices via default credentials (e.g., username "admin", password "admin") and outdated firmware that contains known vulnerabilities.
Microsoft Azure Blocks Largest DDoS Attack in History — attack equivalent to streaming 3.5 million Netflix movies at once
Yesterday's global internet outage caused by single file on Cloudflare servers
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/network-providers/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/network-providers/botnet-smashes-ddos-traffic-record-at-31-4-tb-s-equivalent-to-streaming-2-2-million-netflix-4k-movies-at-once-attack-was-large-enough-to-take-entire-countries-offline#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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