In September 2016, a Mirai-linked series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks sent traffic from more than 145,000 compromised internet-connected devices toward OVH, a major hosting provider. OVH later reported attack peaks of up to 1 Tbps. A separate estimate from OVH founder and CTO Octave Klaba put the devices’ potential combined capacity above 1.5 Tbps—a projection, not the same measurement as the observed peak.
What happened to OVH?
OVH was hit by a series of DDoS attacks in September 2016. A DDoS attack attempts to make a website or online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic or requests from many sources. In this case, the sources included a large botnet of compromised IoT devices.
The timeline is not a single, universally cited date. OVH’s October 5, 2016 retrospective described attacks during the week of September 19 and said the company had been under attack for a little over a week. ENISA lists the OVH Mirai DDoS under September 19, 2016, while Hitachi’s summary, citing a JPCERT/CC alert, gives September 27. These dates may refer to different points in the attack series.
How large was the attack?
| Figure | What it describes | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 1 Tbps | Peak attack traffic reported by OVH | OVHcloud Team, 2016 retrospective |
| More than 145,000 devices | Compromised connected devices sending requests simultaneously | OVHcloud Team, 2016 retrospective |
| 145,607 cameras and DVRs; capacity above 1.5 Tbps | Estimated ability of the devices to generate traffic, not a reported observed attack peak | Octave Klaba, OVH founder and CTO, as reported by SecurityWeek on September 27, 2016 |
The 1 Tbps peak and the estimate above 1.5 Tbps are not necessarily contradictory: OVH reported traffic it observed, whereas Klaba described what the estimated collection of devices could send. The available accounts do not precisely reconcile their measurement methods.
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The scale figures also depend on scope. ENISA’s 2017 account says the wider Mirai botnet had more than one million hacked IoT devices, mostly DVRs and CCTV cameras. Cloudflare’s 2018 retrospective estimates that more than 600,000 vulnerable IoT devices were infected at Mirai’s November 2016 peak, based on its own telemetry. Neither figure is the count of devices participating in the OVH attack.
Which devices were involved?
Cameras and DVRs were prominent, but they were not the only compromised equipment OVH identified. Its account also names NAS devices, xDSL routers, and Raspberry Pi devices. The incident is better understood as an attack using a varied collection of insecure connected equipment, rather than cameras alone.
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How did Mirai turn devices into a botnet?
Mirai combined a self-propagating component with a botnet control system. Its scanning component searched for vulnerable devices and, in the initial version described by Cloudflare, tried a fixed list of 64 common default username-and-password pairs. A successfully compromised device could then be reported to command-and-control infrastructure. The operators could direct infected devices—known as bots—to attack chosen targets.
ENISA describes Mirai infections in this context as occurring through Telnet. Hitachi’s broader account also describes exposed Telnet and default or simple credentials as infection paths, and discusses command-injection vulnerabilities affecting devices that implement TR-069. These accounts explain Mirai’s wider methods; they do not establish that every device involved in the OVH attacks was compromised in precisely the same way.
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Once controlled, bots could send different kinds of traffic. Cloudflare describes Mirai attack methods that included HTTP, UDP, and TCP flooding. The result was distributed traffic from many devices, rather than a single source that OVH could block with one simple filter.
Why was this incident significant?
The OVH attacks showed how ordinary connected equipment could be repurposed to threaten services far larger than the devices themselves. A camera or router with weak security could become part of an attack network and could also help scan for other vulnerable equipment. The risk therefore extended beyond the device owner: compromised devices could be used to disrupt unrelated websites and online services.
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OVH said its DDoS protection withstood the attacks described in its retrospective. That outcome should not be read as evidence that every organization can absorb a similar event. OVH also noted that smaller operators may have less spare network capacity and fewer resources to pay for protection.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What can device owners and service operators learn?
For owners of connected devices
- Change factory usernames and passwords, and avoid simple or reused credentials.
- Disable remote administration and services such as Telnet when they are not needed; do not expose management interfaces directly to the internet without a clear operational reason.
- Install firmware updates and maintain routers and other network equipment so known vulnerabilities are less likely to remain exploitable.
- Review which devices are reachable from outside your home or organization. A device that is no longer used should not remain unnecessarily exposed.
For organizations that host online services
- Plan for DDoS resilience at more than one layer: harden devices and services, detect and filter malicious traffic, and ensure there is adequate upstream mitigation capacity.
- Assess capacity and operational resources realistically. The OVH account highlights that spare network capacity and the cost of protection can be constraints for smaller operators.
- Do not assume that better device security alone prevents an incoming DDoS attack. Device-side prevention reduces the chance that equipment joins a botnet; network-side filtering and upstream capacity address traffic that reaches a service.
The incident does not establish that any particular consumer product can prevent botnet infection or guarantee DDoS protection. Its practical lesson is to reduce exposed, weakly secured devices and to plan for attacks at the network level.
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