Google says it has blocked another huge DDoS attack TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Google says it has blocked another huge DDoS attack By Sead Fadilpašić published 19 August 2022 Attack used HTTPS traffic, which is quite expensive (Image credit: Shutterstock) Audio player loading… Google claims to have stopped on of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks ever seen. In a blog post (opens in new tab), the company's Senior Product Manager for Cloud Armor, Emil Kiner, and Technical Lead Satya Konduru, said its tool stopped a Layer 7 HTTPS DDoS attack that peaked at 46 million requests per second (rps), making it 76% larger compared to the previous record-holder. "To give a sense of the scale of the attack, that is like receiving all the daily requests to Wikipedia (one of the top 10 trafficked websites in the world) in just 10 seconds," the blog explained. Tor exit nodes used The attack reached its peak some ten minutes in but lasted more than an hour (69 minutes). The researchers speculate that the attackers stopped when they saw that their efforts weren't producing the desired outcome. From the technical side of things, it seems the botnet used in the attack was relatively powerful. All in all, 5,256 source IPs were used, originating from 132 countries. The attack used encrypted requests (HTTPS), meaning it took extra computing resources to generate - it was quite an expensive endeavor. Almost a quarter (22%) of all source IPs (1,169) corresponded to Tor exit node endpoints (opens in new tab), although their request volume represented just 3% of all attack traffic. Read more> Cloudflare has blocked one of the largest DDoS attacks of all time (opens in new tab) > Akamai blocks largest-ever DDoS attack (opens in new tab) > We pick the best proxy tools around (opens in new tab) "While we believe Tor participation in the attack was incidental due to the nature of the vulnerable services, even at 3% of the peak (greater than 1.3 million rps) our analysis shows that Tor exit-nodes can send a significant amount of unwelcome traffic to web applications and services," they added. The top four countries contributed almost a third (31%) of the total attack traffic. Google's experts could not definitely confirm the threat actor behind the attack, but are under the impression that this was the work of Mēris, given that the geographic distribution and the types of unsecured services leveraged in the attack match its patterns.Here are the best firewalls (opens in new tab) right now Sead Fadilpašić Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he's written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He's also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications. See more Computing news Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1You may not have to sell a body part to afford the Nvidia RTX 4090 after all2Blizzard made me explain Overwatch 2 smurfing to my mum for nothing3Apple October launches: the new devices we might see this month4Google's AI editing tricks are making Photoshop irrelevant for most people5One of the world's most popular programming languages is coming to Linux1Best laptops for designers and coders 2The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4Microsoft Teams users are using it for a really bad reason, so stop now5iPhone 15 tipped to come with an upgraded 5G chip Technology Magazines (opens in new tab)● (opens in new tab)The best tech tutorials and in-depth reviewsFrom$12.99 (opens in new tab)View (opens in new tab)