DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is now a common threat to the worldwide community. Anything related to the internet tends to slow down or gets thoroughly disrupted by DDoS attacks leading to slow or broken services. DDoS attacks are performed to distract companies’ cybersecurity to continue criminal activities such as data theft, network infiltration etc.
Let’s find out what are the 10 biggest and most famous DDoS attacks of all time.
1. The Google Attack, 2020
According to a TAG (Threat Analysis Group) report, Google cyberattack arose during the 2020 U.S election to change its tactics. Launched from three Chinese ISPS, the attack lasted for six months and attacked thousands of Google’s IP addresses. It finally peaked at a breath-taking 2.5 Tbps.
2. The AWS DDoS Attack in 2020
Happened in February 2020, it is the most recent, but destructive DDoS attack till now. It targeted an unidentified AWS customer through an innovative technique called CLDAP. The technique amplifies the amount of data sent to the victim’s IP address by 56-70 times. The attack lasted for 3 days and peaked at 2.3 tbsp.
3. The Mirai Krebs Attack in 2016
On September 20, 2016, the blog of cybersecurity expert Brain Krebs, was attacked. His blog had been attacking since July 2012 but this attack was relatively heftier than before. Later, the source of the cyberattack was identified as the Morai botnet. It attacked more than 600,000 IoT (internet of things) such as IP cameras, routers, video players etc.
4. The Mirai Dyn DDoS Attack in 2016
In September 2016, someone who claimed to be the author of Mirai software released the source code of Mirai software on several hacker forums. Thus, Mirai DDoS platform was replicated and muted scores of times again. “The traffic tsunami knocked Dyn’s services offline and several high-profile websites including GitHub, HBO, Twitter, Reddit, PayPal, Netflix, and Airbnb.”
5. The 2015 GitHub attack
This attack was specially targeted at GitHub. It was intrinsically a politically-driven attack. The attack lasted for several days. It was solely based on DDoS mitigation strategies. The attack was done by injecting Javascript code into the Baidu browser. Other sites that were also using Baidu’s analytics services were injected by malicious code. This led to infected browsers sending HTTP requests to the targeted GitHub pages.
6. Occupy Central, Hong Kong DDoS Attack in 2014
The attack was carried out in 2014 specifically targeting Occupy Central, the grassroots movement of Hong Kong. The attackers were successful in sending large amounts of traffic to three of Occupy Central’s Web Hosting Services and two independent sites. Neither of them was owned by Occupy Central but openly supported its cause. The attack was executed by five Botnets and led to peak traffic levels of 500 gigabits.
7. The 2013 Spamhaus attack
It was one of the most counted attacks at that time, led by Spamhaus. The organisation convinces customers to combat spam emails and spam-related activity but in reality, those were their preys. The attack drove traffic to Spamhaus at a rate of 300 Gbps.
8. The Six Banks DDoS Attack in 2012
On March 12, 2012, six US banks had to face DDoS attacks. The attack was done by hijacking hundreds of servers through a botnet called Brobot. The attack generated 60+ gigabits of DDoS attack traffic per second.
9. The 2007 Estonia attack
In April 2007, the nation of Estonia had to face a massive DDoS attack especially targeting government services, financial institutions and media outlets. During this time, Estonia was in the early stage of adopting ‘online government’. The attack took place during the election period when it was planned to be held online.
10. The 2000 Mafiaboy attack
It was led by a 15-year-old hacker nicknamed ‘Mafiaboy’. The attack took down seven major websites such as CNN, Dell, E-Trade, eBay, and Yahoo. The attack ended up causing chaos in the stock market. The attack was done by compromising the networks of several universities by using their servers.