By Jess Kinghorn

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Cloudflare mitigates yet another record-breaking DDoS attack—which, at 22.2 Tbps, makes it nearly twice as big as the last hyper-volumetric attack

Jess Kinghorn

24 September 2025

We’re still waiting for Cloudflare’s in-depth report.

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(Image credit: Google)

Seems like it was only the other week I was writing about Cloudflare throwing up its shields against a record-breaking DDoS attack—because it was. Yup, an attack pelting the servers with 11.5 Tbps (terabits per second) of data in less than a minute is more than enough to make me break out in a sweat. But Cloudflare have now shared they’ve mitigated an even larger-scale attack.

Earlier this week, Cloudflare shared via X that it had “autonomously blocked hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks twice as large as anything seen on the Internet before.” This reached a peak of 10.6 Bpps (that’s billion packets per second), battering Cloudflare’s defences with 22.2 Tbps of data. Yes, that’s almost twice as large as the attack reported earlier this month.

Cloudflare just autonomously blocked hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks twice as large as anything seen on the Internet before — peaking at 22.2 Tbps & 10.6 Bpps. Can your mitigation provider’s scrubbing capacity handle that scale? pic.twitter.com/cSYiPZ8WA8September 22, 2025

Looking for a small number in this story? Well, this massive DDoS attack lasted only 40 seconds—not exactly a comfort, I know.

Related articles

Cloudflare mitigates biggest ever DDoS attack, which tried to pelt its target with 11.5 Tbps of data in less than a minute

‘One of the most powerful DDoS botnets to ever exist’ has been taken down by the DoJ with help from Amazon Web Services, Google, Cloudflare and others

Cloudflare calls out Perplexity for hiding ‘crawling activity’ as AI bot scrapes websites that explicitly disallow it, Perplexity responds by calling them ‘more flair than cloud’

In the past, we’ve seen hackers hijack various internet-of-things devices to fuel large-scale attacks like this (just in case you were looking for one more reason not to get a fridge with a WiFi connection). But unlike last time, Cloudflare has yet to share any details about where exactly this attack came from or how it was executed.

Cloudflare shared it is working on a report that would go into more detail about the DDoS attack it mitigated earlier this month. That has yet to materialise, but I’ve little doubt this even larger-scale attack will also make an appearance in the upcoming report. When I do get my mitts on that, you can likely expect another of my tried and true club-going metaphors to simplify what went down.
In the meantime, I’m left to wonder just how big a DDoS attack Cloudflare can mitigate. Obviously, Cloudflare getting toppled by an absolute unit of a DDoS attack would be disastrous for a not insignificant portion of the internet (if even some of the names among these client case studies is anything to go by), and I’m definitely not living in hope that it ever happens.
However, if I’m thinking about it, you can bet there’s an enterprising hacker or hacker group who reckons the resulting level of infamy might be worth the attempt.

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Jess Kinghorn

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Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense.

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Cloudflare mitigates biggest ever DDoS attack, which tried to pelt its target with 11.5 Tbps of data in less than a minute

‘One of the most powerful DDoS botnets to ever exist’ has been taken down by the DoJ with help from Amazon Web Services, Google, Cloudflare and others

Cloudflare calls out Perplexity for hiding ‘crawling activity’ as AI bot scrapes websites that explicitly disallow it, Perplexity responds by calling them ‘more flair than cloud’

Microsoft confirms SharePoint vulnerabilities have been exploited by suspected Chinese hackers, as reports indicate the US Nuclear Security Administration may have been among those compromised

Microsoft warns of ‘active attacks’ on its government and business server tech, with one cybersecurity expert claiming that they should ‘assume that you have been compromised’

Japanese researchers achieve 1,020,000,000 Mbps internet speeds over a 1,123 mile line, 3.5 million times faster than the average US connection and a hell of a lot quicker than mine

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