Microsoft has experienced a record-breaking 3.47 terabits per second (Tbps) distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on its Azure servers in Asia.
According to Azure Networking product manager Alethea Toh, an unnamed Azure user in Asia was targeted with a DDoS attack in November with a throughput of 3.47 Tbps and a packet rate of 340 million packets per second.
The attack originated from roughly 10,000 sources across the globe, including China, South Korea, Russia, Iran, and Taiwan, lasting for 15 minutes. However, it is not the first one of such gigantic scale, as there were two additional assaults, one of 3.25 Tbps and another of 2.55 Tbps in December in Asia.
"In November, Microsoft mitigated a DDoS attack with a throughput of 3.47 Tbps and a packet rate of 340 million packets per second (pps), targeting an Azure customer in Asia. We believe this to be the largest attack ever reported in history," said Alethea Toh.
"This was a distributed attack originating from approximately 10,000 sources and from multiple countries across the globe, including the United States, China, South Korea, Russia, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia, and Taiwan."
But this isn't the only large attack Microsoft has had to deal with over the past few months. Last year in December, Microsoft countered two more attacks that surpassed 2.5 Tbps, both of which were focused on customers in Asia. The first of the attacks was a 3.25 Tbps UDP attack, while the other attack was a 2.55 Tbps UDP flood that lasted for just a little over five minutes.
According to Microsoft, these attacks, are part of an unprecedented number of attacks seen over the course of the second half of 2021 around the globe. In India alone, Microsoft experienced a 30-fold surge in DDoS attacks in October. Additionally, in 2021, Microsoft mitigated 40% more attacks in the second half of the year compared to the first half. On August 10th alone, Microsoft saw a whopping 4,296 attacks.
The primary reason DDoS attacks have escalated so much during the end of 2021 is related to DDoS "for hire" services, which Microsoft notes, are incredibly cheap these days to acquire, giving attackers more incentive to push more attacks. Despite this, Microsoft has successfully countered every single attack aimed at it thus far. Let's hope the company's team of highly skilled engineers can continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
