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Google says its infrastructure absorbed a 2.5 terabits-per-second (Tbps) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in September 2017. The attack was the culmination of a six-month campaign, reached a reported peak of 167 million packets per second, and had no impact on Google’s services. Google published its detailed account on October 16, 2020—not in 2017.
What happened in Google’s 2017 DDoS attack?
In a blog post published October 16, 2020, Google Security Reliability Engineer Damian Menscher said the company’s infrastructure absorbed a 2.5 Tbps DDoS attack in September 2017. He described it as the culmination of a six-month campaign that used multiple attack methods. These figures and the incident account are Google’s disclosures; the available account does not establish independent measurements.
A DDoS attack tries to overwhelm a target with traffic from multiple sources. Google reported a peak bandwidth of 2.5 Tbps and a peak rate of 167 million packets per second (pps). Those are distinct measurements: bandwidth describes the volume of data moving across network links, while packet rate indicates how quickly network equipment must process individual packets.
How did the attack generate so much traffic?
Google described a reflection attack involving spoofed traffic and exposed internet servers. Several networks sent packets with forged source addresses to vulnerable CLDAP, DNS, and SNMP servers. The servers replied with much larger responses, directed at Google rather than at the systems that had sent the original packets.
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Google said about 180,000 exposed servers were used as reflectors. The amplification—the small request prompting a much larger reply—made it possible to direct substantial traffic at the target without sending all of that traffic directly from the originating networks. The 180,000 figure and the attack rates are reported by Google.
Did the attack disrupt Google?
No. Google said the attack targeted thousands of its IP addresses but had no impact. Menscher wrote that the broad targeting was “presumably in hopes of slipping past automated defenses”; that explanation was Google’s inference, not a stated motive from an identified attacker.
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Google did not name the attacker in its account, and the post does not establish who was responsible or why. The reported absence of impact is Google’s account of its own services, not a claim that the traffic caused no effects elsewhere on the internet.
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Google said it reported thousands of vulnerable servers to their network providers and worked with providers to trace the sources of spoofed packets so they could be filtered. This response addressed both sides of the problem: the exposed systems generating amplified replies and the networks sending traffic with forged source addresses.
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What does Google’s defense advice mean for other organizations?
Google’s account describes a layered approach rather than a single control that guarantees protection. Its guidance includes maintaining sufficient capacity, filtering traffic before it reaches applications, planning for graceful degradation, preparing response playbooks, using extensive peering, and applying network access control lists (ACLs) to throttle attack traffic. These are elements of Google’s approach and advice, not a universal guarantee against outages.
- Plan for scale: Capacity helps absorb surges, but capacity alone does not replace filtering or response planning.
- Filter early: Blocking or limiting attack traffic at network layers can keep it from consuming application resources.
- Decide what can degrade: Graceful degradation means prioritizing critical functions when systems are under pressure instead of allowing every service to fail together.
- Prepare response playbooks: Documented roles and actions can help teams respond quickly as attack patterns change.
- Coordinate across networks: Peering and cooperation with providers can help trace and filter spoofed traffic.
For customers, Google identifies Cloud Armor integrated with Cloud Load Balancing as a DDoS-protection option for deployments in Google Cloud, other clouds, or on-premises environments. It is a Google product; Google’s mention is not an independent comparison or a recommendation that it fits every organization.
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Was it still the largest DDoS attack after Google’s later report?
“Record-breaking” describes how the 2017 attack was presented when Google disclosed it in 2020; it should not be read as a claim that no larger attack has since been reported. In 2023, Google reported mitigating a separate Layer 7 attack that peaked above 398 million requests per second (rps). Requests per second measures application-layer demand, not network bandwidth, so it cannot be directly compared with the 2017 figure of 2.5 Tbps.
When comparing DDoS reports, distinguish bandwidth in bits per second (bps), packet rate in packets per second (pps), and application request rate in requests per second (rps). Also check the attack layer, date, source of the figures, and whether the victim reported service impact.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Google Cloud Blog: “Identifying and protecting against the largest DDoS attacks,” by Damian Menscher, October 16, 2020.
- Google Cloud Blog: “Google mitigated the largest DDoS attack to date, peaking above 398 million rps,” October 10, 2023.
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