Denial-of-service attack

These attacks are notable for their disruptive potential, capable of halting essential online services for businesses, governments, and critical infrastructure. The scale can be immense, with some attacks generating traffic volumes measured in terabits per second. This makes them a persistent and significant threat to global internet stability and security, highlighting vulnerabilities in our interconnected digital world.

The term has been prominent in news headlines following a significant outage affecting the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare. Reports indicated that this outage, which temporarily took down major platforms including X and ChatGPT, was linked to an extraordinary surge in traffic consistent with a DDoS attack. This event underscored how reliant the modern internet is on such service providers and the widespread impact a single major attack can have.

Simultaneously, other recent reports have highlighted the evolving scale of these threats, including a separate record-breaking attack successfully mitigated by Microsoft Azure. These incidents collectively demonstrate that DDoS attacks remain a top-tier cybersecurity concern, with attackers continuously developing more powerful methods to disrupt services on a global scale.