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The biggest DDoS attack Cloudflare reported during Halloween week 2024 peaked at 5.6 terabits per second (Tbps). On October 29, a Mirai-variant botnet used more than 13,000 compromised IoT devices to send UDP traffic at an internet service provider in Eastern Asia. The assault lasted 80 seconds, and Cloudflare says its network detected and stopped it autonomously, without human intervention, alerts, or measurable performance degradation.
What happened during Halloween week 2024?
Cloudflare describes the event as the largest DDoS attack ever reported, a qualification that refers to Cloudflare’s own measurement and customer network rather than an independently verified universal record. The target was a Cloudflare Magic Transit customer that operated as an internet service provider in Eastern Asia.
- Date: October 29, 2024
- Peak volume: 5.6 Tbps, or 5,600 gigabits per second
- Duration: 80 seconds
- Protocol and layer: UDP at the network/transport layers (Layers 3/4)
- Source: More than 13,000 IoT devices controlled by a Mirai variant
Bandwidth is only one way to compare denial-of-service events. Packet rate, duration, protocol, source-device count and the target’s capacity can produce a different ranking. Cloudflare’s public statement establishes the 5.6 Tbps peak, but does not make it a comparison of every DDoS metric.
Why Mirai and IoT devices matter
Mirai is a botnet family
Mirai is malware associated with taking control of internet-connected devices such as cameras, routers and other poorly secured IoT equipment. Once compromised, those devices can receive commands from an operator and generate traffic against a chosen target. A “Mirai variant” means the attackers used a related strain or modified code; it does not identify every device model or the exact vulnerability involved.
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More than 13,000 modest devices can produce an enormous combined flood because the traffic is distributed across many networks and locations. That distribution also makes simple source blocking ineffective: stopping one address leaves thousands of other senders active.
How Cloudflare says the attack was stopped
Inline, always-on detection
Cloudflare says its distributed DDoS defenses identified and mitigated the attack automatically. Traffic was filtered in the mitigation network rather than waiting for an analyst to review an alert and manually activate a rule. Cloudflare also says customers experienced no performance degradation during this event.
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Why seconds matter
Cloudflare reports that 91% of network-layer DDoS attacks in its fourth-quarter 2024 data ended within ten minutes. An 80-second attack is therefore shorter than most human response workflows. Always-on inspection and automated filtering are designed for that time scale: detect the abnormal pattern, absorb or discard attack traffic, and pass legitimate packets onward.
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What Cloudflare saw across Q4 2024
The Halloween incident was an extreme example within a much larger dataset. Cloudflare says it mitigated 6.9 million DDoS attacks in Q4 2024.
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| Measure | Cloudflare’s Q4 2024 figure |
|---|---|
| Total DDoS attacks mitigated | 6.9 million |
| Change from Q3 2024 | 16% increase |
| Change from Q4 2023 | 83% increase |
| Layer 3/4 attacks | 49% (3.4 million) |
| HTTP attacks | 51% (3.5 million) |
| Growth in attacks above 1 Tbps | 1,885% quarter over quarter |
| HTTP attacks launched by known botnets | 73% |
These are Cloudflare’s observed and mitigated attacks, not a census of every DDoS event on the internet. The 1,885% figure describes growth in attacks exceeding 1 Tbps compared with the previous quarter; it does not mean attack traffic itself rose by that percentage.
Which DDoS techniques were most common?
Within Cloudflare’s Layer 3/4 attacks in Q4 2024, the leading vectors were:
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- SYN floods: 38%
- DNS floods: 16%
- UDP floods: 14%
The Halloween record used UDP. HTTP attacks, counted separately, target web-request handling at the application layer and made up 51% of Cloudflare’s total Q4 volume.
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What this means for organizations
- Network capacity alone is not a complete defense. A 5.6 Tbps flood can overwhelm an ordinary internet connection before local equipment can inspect it.
- Protection must be inline and continuously active. Short attacks can finish before a manual escalation process is complete.
- Layer coverage matters. Network floods such as UDP and SYN attacks require different controls from HTTP request floods.
- IoT exposure remains a supply-chain risk. Weak credentials, unpatched firmware and devices exposed directly to the internet can become attack infrastructure.
- Metrics need context. Peak Tbps, packets per second, duration, vector and mitigation location should all be recorded when comparing incidents.
How to evaluate a DDoS-protection service
- Confirm traffic coverage: Check whether the service protects the IP ranges, protocols and ports your organization actually uses.
- Check activation behavior: Prefer protection that is continuously in path or can switch on automatically, rather than relying solely on a human-approved emergency rule.
- Review capacity and geography: Ask where traffic is absorbed and whether the provider’s distributed network can handle attacks larger than your upstream links.
- Separate network and application controls: Verify that UDP, SYN, DNS and HTTP protections are all available where required.
- Test operations before an incident: Establish escalation contacts, logging, origin-protection measures and a recovery plan.
Is this still the biggest DDoS attack?
It was the largest attack Cloudflare had reported when its January 2025 account described the Halloween event. Because later providers or reports may document larger attacks, the precise and durable wording is: Cloudflare reported the 5.6 Tbps incident as the largest attack ever reported at that time.
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