January 24, 2025

🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-01-23

This edition highlights the staggering scale of a recent DDoS attack compared to past incidents.

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One headline for a Thursday Throwback caught my eye. Specifically, the claim of ~5.6 Tbps of traffic during the peak of one DDoS attack.

Techmeme: In 2024, Cloudflare's autonomous DDoS defense systems blocked ~21.3M DDoS attacks, up 53% YoY, and 420+ DDoS attacks in Q4 2024 exceeded 1Tbps, up 1,885% QoQ (The Cloudflare Blog)

From The Cloudflare Blog. View the full context on Techmeme.

For perspective, in 2013 there was one DDoS attack that "almost broke the Internet" which was claimed to be ~0.085 Tbps of traffic.

Techmeme: The DDoS That Almost Broke the Internet (Matthew Prince/CloudFlare blog)

This story, by Matthew Prince / CloudFlare blog, appeared on Techmeme.

My point is, the comparisons are quite a bit different. The mitigation techniques and expansion of the Cloudflare business has likely changed.

Also likely is those differences have turned into a different kind of data claim for marketing purposes. So, I do wonder if the claims will one day relate to the theoretical throughput of a modern multi-Tbps Ethernet switch slot or a collection of switches at fully populated slot capacity.

Note: Some images via Unsplash

Disclosure

I am linking to my disclosure.

Cuthrell Consulting LLC
Attn: Jay Cuthrell
1903 Live Oak St #92
Beaufort, NC 28516-0092

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