Google thwarted the largest web-based distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack ever launched against a client, which peaked at 46 million requests per second (RPS).
The company asserts that this “Layer 7 DDoS” attack is the biggest ever, at least 76% bigger than the previous record. DDoS intrusions are occurring more frequently and are becoming significantly larger.
The customer’s network security team added the Google Cloud Armor-recommended rule to their security policy, and it immediately began to block the attack traffic.
In the two minutes that followed, the assault surged from 100,000 RPS to a high of 46 million RPS. The assault flow was already being blocked by Cloud Armor, thus the target workload continued as usual.
“Over the next few minutes, the attack started to recede before ending 69 minutes later. It’s possible that the attacker realized their attack was not having the expected impact because it cost a lot of money to carry out “the company stated. The global distribution of the attack and the use of numerous unprotected services make it a member of the Meris family of attacks.
According to Google, the Meris approach uses risky proxies to hide the true source of the attacks, which is why it is well-known for its massive strikes that have broken DDoS records. The attack was halted at the edge of Google’s network, and the malicious requests were prevented upstream of the customer’s application.
Attack volumes will continue to increase, and tactics will continue to evolve. To protect your online apps and services from targeted web attacks, Google recommends putting defenses and controls in place at multiple tiers of your environment and the network of your infrastructure providers.
