Record for the largest ever HTTPS DDoS attack smashed once again

Google Cloud claims to have repelled the biggest HTTPS DDoS attack ever recorded after a Cloud Armor customer was targeted by attacks peaking at 46 million requests per second (RPS).

The DDoS attack, which occurred on June 1, initially targeted the victim's HTTPS Load Balancer with 10,000 RPS. Based on data derived from traffic analysis, Google's Cloud Armor Protection initiated an alert eight minutes later, once the attack had intensified to 100,000 RPS.

Just two minutes later, the attack surged to 46 million RPS, almost 80% higher than the previous record of 26 million RPS, set during an attack on a Cloudflare customer in June.

Google claims that, at its peak, the scale of the attack was equivalent to receiving the entirety of Wikipedia's daily traffic in just 10 seconds. The attack is said to have lasted 69 minutes in total, steadily declining in RPS following the initial peak.

Researchers at Google identified 5,256 source IPs from 132 countries in connection with the attack. Encrypted requests (HTTPS) were also leveraged, suggesting very powerful computing resources on the attackers’ side.

Although no specific individual or group has claimed responsibility, Google Cloud researchers say the geographic distribution of the nodes used, and the types of services deployed, suggest a Mēris style botnet may have been behind the attack – a botnet previously associated with record-breaking attacks.

“The attack illustrates two trends: that DDoS attack sizes are continuing to grow exponentially and that attack methods are continuing to evolve, leveraging new kinds of vulnerable services from which to launch attacks,” said Emil Kiner, senior product manager at Google Cloud.