Massive 22.2 Tbps DDoS Attack Sets New World Record

According to Cloudflare, the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever recorded was successfully mitigated, with a peak of 22.2 terabits per second and 10.6 billion packets per second. The incident, which lasted only about 40 seconds, crushed the previous record of 11.5 Tbps and demonstrated a dramatic escalation in the scale and speed of modern cyber threats.

The attack used a multi-vector approach, combining UDP floods, SYN floods, and reflection attacks, amplified by vast botnets made up of compromised computers and IoT devices. Attackers aimed to overwhelm defenses with a torrent of traffic delivered in a very short window, a “hit‑and‑run” tactic that requires real‑time, automated detection and mitigation at machine speed.

Cloudflare’s edge network and machine‑learning analytics detected and blocked the traffic autonomously, with scrubbing performed close to the source to prevent malicious packets from reaching targeted services. This underscores how hyper‑volumetric DDoS campaigns are reshaping network security, and why organisations must evaluate whether their providers can withstand assaults at this unprecedented scale.