What happened
A distributed denial-of-service campaign reached a peak traffic volume of 31.4 terabits per second, setting a new publicly reported record. The attack was part of a broader campaign targeting multiple companies, most of them in the telecommunications sector, and was detected and mitigated by Cloudflare on December 19. The campaign consisted of thousands of short-duration hyper-volumetric attacks attributed to the Aisuru botnet, with most individual attacks peaking between 1 and 5 Tbps and several exceeding 30 Tbps. Many of the attacks lasted between 60 and 120 seconds. The activity targeted organizations across sectors including telecommunications, gaming, and IT services, with affected infrastructure observed in regions such as the United States and China.
Who is affected
Organizations in targeted sectors experienced direct network disruption attempts from the DDoS campaign.
Why CISOs should care
The scale of the attack demonstrates the increasing capacity of botnets to overwhelm traditional mitigation thresholds.
3 practical actions
- Review DDoS mitigation limits. Confirm defenses can handle extreme traffic volumes.
- Analyze traffic patterns. Identify similar burst-style attack signatures.
- Assess sector exposure. Review relevance to industry-specific targeting.