Welcome to our DDoS Threat Report for the third quarter of 2022. This report includes insights and trends about the DDoS threat landscape - as observed across Cloudflare’s global network.

Multi-terabit strong DDoS attacks have become increasingly frequent. In Q3, Cloudflare automatically detected and mitigated multiple attacks that exceeded 1 Tbps. The largest attack was a 2.5 Tbps DDoS attack launched by a Mirai botnet variant, aimed at the Minecraft server, Wynncraft. This is the largest attack we’ve ever seen from the bitrate perspective.

It was a multi-vector attack consisting of UDP and TCP floods. However, Wynncraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game Minecraft server where hundreds and thousands of users can play on the same server, didn’t even notice the attack, since Cloudflare filtered it out for them.

The 2.5 Tbps DDoS attack that targeted Wynncraft — launched by Mirai

Overall this quarter, we've seen:

• An increase in DDoS attacks compared to last year.
• Longer-lasting volumetric attacks, a spike in attacks generated by the Mirai botnet and its variants.
• Surges in attacks targeting Taiwan and Japan.

• HTTP DDoS attacks increased by 111% YoY, but decreased by 10% QoQ.
• HTTP DDoS attacks targeting Taiwan increased by 200% QoQ; attacks targeting Japan increased by 105% QoQ.
• Reports of Ransom DDoS attacks increased by 67% YoY and 15% QoQ.

• L3/4 DDoS attacks increased by 97% YoY and 24% QoQ.
• L3/4 DDoS attacks by Mirai botnets increased by 405% QoQ.
• The Gaming / Gambling industry was the most targeted by L3/4 DDoS attacks including a massive 2.5 Tbps DDoS attack.

This report is based on DDoS attacks that were automatically detected and mitigated by Cloudflare's DDoS Protection systems. To learn more about how it works, check out this deep-dive blog post.

Ransom DDoS attacks are attacks where the attacker demands a ransom payment, usually in the form of Bitcoin, to stop/avoid the attack. In Q3, 15% of Cloudflare customers that responded to our survey reported being targeted by HTTP DDoS attacks accompanied by a threat or a ransom note. This represents a 15% increase QoQ and 67% increase YoY of reported ransom DDoS attacks.