With a peak speed of an unprecedented 31.4 terabits per second (Tbps), the Aisuru/Kimwolf botnet launched the biggest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever made public This article explores 2025 ddos attacks. . Beginning on December 19, 2025, a massive attack known as "The Night Before Christmas" campaign targeted Cloudflare's infrastructure and customers with hyper-volumetric attacks that combined Layer 4 DDoS attacks at record bandwidth with application-layer HTTP floods exceeding 200 million requests per second (rps).

Learn more about software that prevents cyberattacks Plugin for WordPress security Cloud computing Software for endpoint detection and response Security software for Windows Threat intelligence reports from Microsoft 365 Network of Zero Trust Obtain solutions News alert hacking The DDoS threat landscape significantly increased with the "Night Before Christmas" attack, which surpassed the previous record of 29.7 Tbps set by the same Aisuru botnet in September 2025.

Threat actors used millions of unofficial Android streaming boxes to create previously unheard-of traffic volumes by using compromised Android TV devices as attack sources. The 31.4 Tbps peak represents a scale that would have overwhelmed most DDoS mitigation providers, with competitor services like Akamai Prolexic (20 Tbps capacity), Netscout Arbor Cloud (15 Tbps), and Imperva (13 Tbps) facing theoretical bandwidth utilization rates exceeding 150-240%. The botnet showed resilience in spite of these mitigation efforts by quickly moving C2 nodes to new infrastructure, especially by using Resi Rack LLC IP addresses and common autonomous system numbers (ASNs).

In 2025, DDoS attacks increased dramatically, setting the stage for the record-breaking attack.

DDoS attacks increased by 121% from 21.3 million in 2024 and 236% from 14 million in 2023, more than doubling to 47.1 million in 2025. In 2025, Cloudflare's systems prevented an average of 5,376 DDoS attacks per hour, which included 1,451 HTTP DDoS attacks and 3,925 network-layer attacks. Most of this increase was caused by network-layer DDoS attacks, which more than tripled from 11.4 million in 2024 to 34.4 million in 2025.

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