Largest Ever 400Gbs DDOS Attack Hits CloudFlare

Monday afternoon, February 10, 2014, CloudFlare (DDOS protection firm), was met with the largest DDOS attack to date. A DDOS, or a distributed denial of service attack is a popular method used by hackers to take websites offline. The hacker will use a hacked server, large network of computers, or have a dedicated server distribution dedicated to taking websites offline. The hacker will then send requests to the servers or computers to visit the desired target. The servers or massive network of computer will visit the website all at one time, initially overloading the server till it gets taken offline. During this time customers, potential visitors, and/or employees are met with a huge inconvenience. These inconveniences can cost websites thousands, and put a large amount of stress on the network.

Monday afternoon hackers succeeded in reaching new DDOS heights with a 400Gbs attack. Moments after the attack Cloudflare CEO tweeted

Very big NTP reflection attack hitting us right now. Appears to be bigger than the #Spamhaus attack from last year. Mitigating.

— Matthew Prince (@eastdakota) February 10, 2014

Last year infamous hackers sent a 300Gbs attack towards CloudFlare, the attack almost broke the internet. The attack that started on Monday, March 18, 2013, was named the largest DDOS attack ever recorded. The attack lasted several days, but eventually halted.

Just this week unknown hackers set a record breaking DDOS attack at 400Gbs. The Hacker News reported

Attackers leveraged weaknesses in the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is used to synchronize computer clocks, but hackers are abusing the NTP servers by sending small spoofed 8-byte UDP packets to the vulnerable server that requests a large amount of data (megabytes worth of traffic) to be sent to the DDoS’s target IP Address.
— The Hacker News

The ever growing NTP abuse has been used to take gaming servers, and other large servers offline. While CloudFlare was not taken offline the unknown attacker has set the record for DDOS attacks. While the hackers identity remains unknown, CloudFlares future holds the same.

Update: Around at the same time French hosting Company “OVH” reported begin hit by a DDOS attack over 350Gbps.