A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one of the most disruptive and devastating cyberattacks, flooding a target with excessive traffic to make services unavailable. Over the years, tech giants and online infrastructure providers have been victims of some of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded — with traffic measured in terabits per second (Tbps).
Here’s a look at the 12 most brutal DDoS attacks in history, ranked by their impact and bandwidth:
🥇 1. Microsoft Azure – 3.47 Tbps
📅 Year: 2021
This is the largest DDoS attack ever recorded, targeting Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. Azure successfully mitigated the attack thanks to its global scale and distributed mitigation systems.
🥈 2. Google Cloud – 2.54 Tbps
📅 Year: 2017
Google Cloud faced a massive attack linked to state-sponsored actors. The scale of this attack revealed the critical importance of layered network defense.
🥉 3. Amazon AWS – 2.3 Tbps
📅 Year: 2020
Amazon Web Services reported one of the most sustained and powerful attacks in its history, demonstrating how DDoS-for-hire services are evolving rapidly.
4. GitHub – 1.35 Tbps
📅 Year: 2018
GitHub was hit with a record-breaking memcached amplification attack, briefly knocking the platform offline before mitigation was activated.
5. Dyn DNS – 1.2 Tbps
📅 Year: 2016
This infamous attack disrupted major sites like Twitter, Netflix, and Reddit by targeting the DNS provider Dyn, showing how DDoS can cripple the internet’s backbone.
6. OVH – 1.0 Tbps
📅 Year: 2016
OVH, a French cloud provider, suffered one of the largest IoT botnet-based attacks at the time, with traffic from thousands of infected devices.
7. Alibaba Cloud – 985 Gbps
📅 Year: 2020
Alibaba’s infrastructure came under heavy fire, yet the Chinese cloud giant withstood it with resilient infrastructure.
8. KoS (Kidz on the Server) – 620 Gbps
📅 Year: 2016
This hacktivist group launched several attacks targeting gaming and cloud platforms, gaining notoriety for their disruptive capabilities.
9. Spamhaus – 300 Gbps
📅 Year: 2013
At the time, this was considered the largest DDoS ever, targeting the anti-spam organization Spamhaus and affecting core internet routers.
10. Imperva – 202 Gbps
📅 Year: 2020
Security firm Imperva reported this high-speed attack and used it as a case study to reinforce global DDoS mitigation strategies.
11. Yandex – 174 Gbps
📅 Year: 2021
The Russian search giant was targeted by a powerful botnet, which tested the resilience of its infrastructure.
12. Cloudflare – 138 Gbps
📅 Year: 2021
Despite being a DDoS protection provider, Cloudflare itself has faced large-scale attacks, reinforcing the arms race between attackers and defenders.
Conclusion
The increasing frequency and scale of DDoS attacks highlight the importance of strong network security, scalable cloud infrastructure, and global mitigation systems. These attacks are not just technical events; they can disrupt economies, delay services, and reveal vulnerabilities in even the most fortified systems.
Top comments (0)