DDoS attacks are typically short but intense, designed to deliver high enough levels of traffic in a brief period to efficiently disrupt and cripple unprepared systems. The goal is to overwhelm targets quickly, causing maximum disruption before defenses have time to respond.
However, we have seen an increase in longer-duration attacks and recently detected and blocked attacks that broke away from these norms in real-time. This specific attack was massive in scale and sustained for an unprecedented duration. The total amount of data blocked exceeded 1.44 petabytes —equivalent to over one million hours of TV streaming.
The attack vector was Mirai, a botnet known for its typically short, high-intensity assaults. However, in this case, the attack persisted for over eight hours, a significant departure from Mirai’s usual behavior. Thanks to the combined strength of our SmartWall ONETM solution and our DDoS Intelligence Service, the customer experienced zero downtime throughout this prolonged attack.
The critical factor in this successful defense was our proactive approach. Months before the attack occurred, our DDoS Intelligence Update Services ensured that the SmartWall ONE solution was pre-updated to tackle emerging threats and provided protection beyond. This foresight and preparation enabled the DDoS defense to withstand such a large-scale and prolonged assault without compromising service availability and not consuming any internal SOC resources.
