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Showing posts with label DDOS Attack. Show all posts

Kimwolf Botnet Hijacks 1.8M Android Devices for DDoS Chaos

 

The Kimwolf botnet is one of the largest recently found Android-based threats, contaminating over 1.8 million devices mostly Android TV boxes and IoT devices globally. Named after its reliance on the wolfSSL library, this malware appeared in late October 2025 when XLab researchers noticed a suspicious C2 domain rising to the top, surpassing Google on Cloudflare charts. Operators evolved the botnet from the Aisuru family, enhancing evasion tactics to build a massive proxy and DDoS army. 

Kimwolf propagates through residential proxy services, taking advantage of misconfigured services like PYPROXY to access on home networks and attack devices with open Android Debug Bridge (ADB) ports. Once executed, it drops payloads such as the ByteConnect SDK via pre-packaged malicious apps or direct downloads, which converts victims into proxy nodes that can be rented on underground markets. The malware has 13 DDoS techniques under UDP, TCP, and ICMP while 96.5% of commands are related to traffic proxying for ad fraud, scraping, and account takeovers.

Capabilities extend to reverse shells for remote control, file management, and lateral movement within networks by altering DNS settings. To dodge takedowns, it employs DNS over TLS (DoT), elliptic curve signatures for C2 authentication, and EtherHiding via Ethereum Name Service (ENS) blockchain domains. Between November 19-22, 2025, it issued 1.7 billion DDoS commands; researchers estimate its peak capacity at 30 Tbps, fueling attacks on U.S., Chinese, and European targets.

Infections span 222 countries, led by Brazil (14.63%), India (12.71%), and the U.S. (9.58%), hitting uncertified TV boxes that lack updates and Google protections. Black Lotus Labs null-routed over 550 C2 nodes since October 2025, slashing active bots from peaks of 1.83 million to 200,000, while linking it to proxy sales on Discord by Resi Rack affiliates. Operators retaliated with taunting DDoS floods referencing journalist Brian Krebs. 

Security teams urge focusing on smart TV vulnerabilities like firmware flaws and weak passwords, pushing for intelligence sharing to dismantle such botnets.Users should disable ADB, update firmware, avoid sideloading, and monitor networks for anomalies. As consumer IoT grows, Kimwolf underscores the risks of turning homes into cyber weapons, demanding vendor accountability and robust defenses.

Aisuru Botnet Unleashes Record 29.7 Tbps DDoS Attack

 

A new record-breaking 29.7 Tbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack launched via the Aisuru botnet has set a new standard for internet disruption and reinforced that multi-terabit attacks are on track to soon be an everyday event for DDoS defenders. According to Cloudflare’s latest DDoS threats report, Aisuru launched an intense hyper-volumetric DDoS on a network layer with traffic that reached 29.7 Tbps and 14.1 billion packets per second, reaching new heights beyond previous records that topped 22 Tbps. 

The DDoS attack employed a UDP ‘carpet bombing’ technique that targeted 15,000 destination ports every second with random packet components constantly varying so as not to get filtered out at traditional scrubbing centers. Despite these efforts, Cloudflare reports that Aisuru traffic took mere seconds for an autonomous mitigation system to identify and remove. 

Behind the incident is a botnet Cloudflare now estimates at 1 million to 4 million compromised devices, making Aisuru the biggest DDoS botnet in active circulation. Since the start of 2025, Cloudflare has mitigated 2,867 Aisuru incidents, with 1,304 hyper-volumetric attacks in the third quarter alone - a 54% quarter-over-quarter increase that equates to about 14 mega-events a day. Segments of the botnet are openly leased as "chunks", allowing buyers to rent enough power to take down backbone connections or perhaps even national ISPs for mere hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece.

Cloudflare thwarted a total of 8.3 million DDoS attacks in the third quarter of 2025, a 15% increase from the prior quarter and 40% year-over-year, while marking the 2025 year-to-date total at 36.2 million - already 170% of all attacks recorded in 2024 and still one full quarter away. 

About 71% of Q3 attacks were network-layer traffic, which soared 87% QoQ and 95% YoY, while HTTP-layer events fell 41% QoQ and 17% YoY, indicating a strategic swing back to pure bandwidth and transport-layer exhaustion. The extremes are picked up the most: incidents over 100 Mpps jumped 189% QoQ, and those above 1 Tbps increased by 227%, though many ended within 10 minutes, too late for any effective intervention by manual actions or DDoS-on-demand mitigation programs.

Collateral damage continues to escalate as well. KrebsOnSecurity reports Aisuru-driven traffic has already caused severe outages at U.S. internet services not targeted as main victims. Cloudflare data shows Aisuru and actors like it have targeted telecoms, gaming, hosting, and financial services intensely. Information Technology and Services, telecoms, gambling and casinos are among the toughest hit sectors in Q3. 

Geopolitics and societal unrest are increasingly reflected in attack behavior. DDoS traffic against generative AI service providers jumped as high as 347% month-over-month in September, and DDoS attacks on mining, minerals and metals, and autos failed to lag as tensions escalated involving EV tariffs and China and the EU.

Indonesia continues as source number one for DDoS traffic, registering an astonishing 31,900% increase in HTTP DDoS requests since 2021, and there were sharp increases in Q3 2025 for the Maldives, France, and Belgium, reflecting massive protests and worker walkouts. China stayed the most‑targeted country, followed by Turkey and Germany, with the United States climbing to fifth and the Philippines showing the steepest rise within the top 10, underscoring how modern DDoS campaigns now track political flashpoints, public anger, and regulatory fights over AI and trade almost in real time.

World’s Largest 22.2Tbps DDoS Attack and Rogue SIM Network Busted by US Secret Service

 

Earlier this month, reports highlighted a massive 11.5Tbps DDoS attack — the largest on record at the time. However, that figure was quickly overshadowed this week when a new distributed denial-of-service strike reached an unprecedented 22.2Tbps, transmitting 10.6 billion packets per second. The assault, although lasting just 40 seconds, showcased the immense scale and power of today’s botnets. 

Experts warn that as these malicious networks expand, future DDoS attacks will likely grow even more destructive, targeting vulnerable companies and platforms worldwide.

In another alarming case, the US Secret Service dismantled a rogue cellular network made up of more than 100,000 SIM cards. The network, which was spread across several physical sites, was strategically positioned ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York City.

 Investigators revealed the operation aimed to carry out attacks against diplomats and officials, including DDoS campaigns, deepfaked calls, and even “swatting” attempts — where false bomb or violence threats are reported to law enforcement to provoke an armed response. Doxxing, exposing private personal details, was also among the threats.

These incidents serve as stark reminders of how critical it is to safeguard personal data. Yet, protecting your information is increasingly challenging in a digital economy where data brokers profit from collecting and selling detailed profiles. 

Even everyday apps, from Duolingo to Candy Crush, harvest user data. On the positive side, individuals can take action by requesting data deletion directly from brokers or by using specialized personal data removal services.

FastNetMon Mitigates 1.5 Billion PPS DDoS Attack Leveraging IoT Devices and MikroTik Routers

 

A massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has been detected and mitigated by FastNetMon, targeting a DDoS protection vendor in Western Europe. According to the company, the attack surged to an astonishing 1.5 billion packets per second (pps), ranking among the largest packet-rate floods ever recorded.

FastNetMon revealed that the malicious traffic primarily consisted of UDP floods generated from hijacked customer-premises equipment (CPE), including IoT devices and MikroTik routers. The attack leveraged resources from over 11,000 networks worldwide. While the victim company wasn’t disclosed, FastNetMon confirmed it was a DDoS scrubbing provider, a service that filters malicious traffic during such cyberattacks.

“This event is part of a dangerous trend,” said Pavel Odintsov, founder of FastNetMon. “When tens of thousands of CPE devices can be hijacked and used in coordinated packet floods of this magnitude, the risks for network operators grow exponentially. The industry must act to implement detection logic at the ISP level to stop outgoing attacks before they scale.”

The incident was identified and mitigated in real time, with FastNetMon’s automated systems flagging the abnormal traffic within seconds. Defense measures included scrubbing technologies at the customer’s facility and deploying access control lists (ACLs) on routers vulnerable to amplification abuse.

FastNetMon highlighted that its platform, powered by optimized C++ algorithms, is specifically built to handle traffic events at such a scale. Thanks to these defenses, the targeted provider reportedly suffered no visible downtime or service disruption.

The news comes shortly after Cloudflare reported a record-breaking volumetric attack reaching 11.5 Tbps and 5.1 billion pps, underscoring the growing severity of both packet-rate floods and bandwidth-driven DDoS attacks.

“Taken together, the two incidents underline a rise in both packet-rate and bandwidth-driven floods, a trend that is pressuring the capacity of mitigation platforms worldwide,” FastNetMon said.

“What makes this case remarkable is the sheer number of distributed sources and the abuse of everyday networking devices. Without proactive ISP-level filtering, compromised consumer hardware can be weaponized at a massive scale,” the company added.

DDoS Attacks Emerge as Geopolitical Weapons in 2025

 

The first half of 2025 witnessed more than 8 million distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks worldwide, according to new figures from Netscout. The EMEA region absorbed over 3.2 million incidents, with peak strikes hitting 3.12 Tbps in speed and 1.5 Gpps in volume. Once used mainly to cause digital disruption, DDoS has now evolved into a strategic instrument of geopolitical influence. 

Adversaries are increasingly timing attacks to coincide with politically sensitive moments, striking at critical infrastructure when disruption carries maximum impact. The surge highlights how cheap and accessible DDoS-for-hire services have lowered the bar for attackers, enabling even novices to launch campaigns using AI-driven automation, multi-vector strikes, and carpet-bombing techniques. 

Botnets and Hacktivist Tactics

In March 2025 alone, attackers executed over 27,000 botnet-powered DDoS campaigns, often exploiting existing IoT vulnerabilities rather than new flaws. That month averaged 880 bot-driven incidents daily, peaking at 1,600. The assaults lasted longer too, averaging 18 minutes 24 seconds as adversaries combined multiple attack vectors to evade defenses. 

Among hacktivist actors, NoName057 remained dominant, launching TCP ACK floods, SYN floods, and HTTP/2 POST attacks against governments in Spain, Taiwan, and Ukraine. A newer group, DieNet, carried out more than 60 strikes against targets ranging from U.S. transit systems to Iraqi government sites, expanding its scope to energy, healthcare, and e-commerce. 

“As hacktivist groups leverage automation and AI-driven tools, traditional defenses are being outpaced,” warned Richard Hummel, Director of Threat Intelligence at Netscout. 

He emphasised that the rise of LLM-enabled malware tools like WormGPT and FraudGPT is deepening the risk landscape. While the takedown of NoName057(16) slowed activity temporarily, Hummel cautioned that resilience, intelligence-led strategies, and next-generation DDoS defenses are essential to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Cloudflare Thwarts Record-Breaking DDoS Attack as Global Threat Escalates

 

Cloudflare has successfully blocked the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever recorded, marking a significant moment in the escalating battle against cyber threats. The attack peaked at an unprecedented 7.3 terabits per second (Tbps), targeting an unnamed hosting provider and unleashing 37.4 terabytes of data in just 45 seconds. Cloudflare’s Magic Transit service absorbed the blow, which was composed almost entirely—99.996%—of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood attacks. 

While UDP is commonly used for real-time applications like streaming and gaming due to its speed, that same characteristic makes it vulnerable to exploitation in high-volume cyberattacks. The remaining 0.004% of the traffic—about 1.3 GBps—included various amplification and reflection attack methods such as NTP reflection, Echo reflection, Mirai UDP flood, and RIPv1 amplification. This sliver alone would be enough to cripple most unprotected systems. 

What set this attack apart wasn’t just volume but velocity—it carpet-bombed an average of 21,925 destination ports per second, with peaks reaching 34,517 ports on a single IP address. The attack originated from over 122,000 unique IP addresses spanning 161 countries, with the most significant traffic coming from Brazil, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, and Ukraine. This historic attack is part of a growing wave of DDoS incidents. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, Cloudflare mitigated 20.5 million DDoS attacks—a staggering 358% increase from the same period last year. Nearly 700 of these were hyper-volumetric attacks, averaging eight per day and overwhelmingly leveraging network-layer vulnerabilities via UDP floods. 

Earlier this year, Cloudflare had also defended against a 6.5 Tbps strike linked to the Eleven11bot botnet, composed of tens of thousands of compromised webcams and IoT devices. The rise in DDoS activity is not just a technical issue—it’s being fueled by geopolitical tensions as well. According to Radware’s director of threat intelligence, Pascal Geenens, hacktivist DDoS attacks against U.S. targets surged by 800% in just two days in June, following U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict. Radware’s 2025 Global Threat Analysis Report highlights a 550% global increase in web-based DDoS attacks and a near 400% year-over-year growth in overall DDoS traffic volume. Experts warn that these attacks are only going to become more frequent and intense. To counter this threat, experts recommend a multi-layered defense strategy. 

Partnering with specialized DDoS mitigation providers such as Cloudflare, Akamai, Imperva, or Radware is essential for organizations that lack the infrastructure to defend against large-scale attacks. Blocking traffic from known malicious Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) and using geoblocking can filter out harmful sources, although attackers often bypass these measures with spoofed IPs or botnets. Distributing network infrastructure can prevent single points of failure, while configuring routers and firewalls to block unsafe protocols like ICMP and FTP adds an additional line of defense. Businesses are also advised to work closely with their internet service providers to filter unnecessary traffic upstream. 

Deploying Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) is critical for defending against application-layer threats, and using multiple DNS providers with DNSSEC can ensure site availability even during attacks. Specialized tools like Wordfence for WordPress add another layer of protection for widely used platforms. Importantly, no single solution is sufficient. Organizations must adopt layered defenses and routinely test their systems through red team exercises using tools like HULK, hping3, or GoldenEye to identify vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them. Even small websites are no longer safe from DDoS campaigns. As cybersecurity journalist Steven Vaughan-Nichols noted, his personal site faces about a dozen DDoS attacks every week. In today's threat landscape, robust DDoS defense isn't a luxury—it’s a necessity.

Massive 1Tbps DDoS Attack Cripples Online Betting Site, Exposes Industry’s Ongoing Cybersecurity Failures

 

An online betting company has been knocked offline by a colossal 1-terabit-per-second Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, exposing glaring weaknesses in the digital defences of the gambling industry. Reported by TechRadar, the attack unleashed a massive flood of junk traffic that overwhelmed the site’s infrastructure, rendering its services inaccessible for hours. 

What makes the incident more concerning is the lack of sophistication behind it—this wasn’t a complex, stealthy operation but rather a brute-force flood that succeeded purely through scale. Despite the growing prevalence of such attacks in recent years, many companies in high-risk sectors like online gambling continue to treat cybersecurity as an afterthought. 

With their operations heavily reliant on constant uptime and revenue tied to every second online, gambling platforms remain prime targets for attackers, yet many fail to invest in fundamental protections like cloud-based DDoS mitigation, real-time monitoring, and incident response planning. 

Cybersecurity experts are baffled by this ongoing negligence, especially when previous headline-grabbing attacks—such as the 1.3Tbps assault on GitHub in 2018 or AWS’s 2.3Tbps encounter in 2020—should have prompted serious change. 
Compounding the issue is the role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who continue to shy away from proactive upstream filtering, allowing these massive data floods to reach their targets unchecked. The financial impact of such downtime is severe, with potential losses not only in revenue but also in user trust, legal exposure, and long-term brand damage. 

Security professionals stress that effective DDoS defence requires more than just faith in hosting providers; it demands deliberate investment in scalable protection tools like AWS Shield, Cloudflare, or Akamai, along with robust infrastructure redundancy and tested incident response strategies. 

In 2025, DDoS attacks are no longer anomalies—they’re a constant threat woven into the fabric of the internet. Ignoring them is not cost-saving; it’s gambling with disaster.

Shocking Ways Hackers Can Exploit Your IP Address – You’re Not as Safe as You Think




Your IP address may look like a long number row, but to a hacker, it can be an instrument of evil activity. While your exposure to an IP doesn't pose an immediate danger per se, it is thus important to understand what a hacker can do with it. Let's break down how cybercriminals can exploit an IP and how you can keep it safe.

Determining Your Broad Area of Location

The very first thing a hacker will easily know once he has obtained your IP address is your general area of location. He can find out your city or region using even simple online tools such as IP tracking websites. Of course, he won't pinpoint the street number but can already pinpoint your general area or location which may trigger other related hacking attempts such as phishing attacks. Hackers would use your address and ISP to dupe you through social engineering.

IP Spoofing: Identity Mimicry Online

The hacker can manipulate the IP addresses and make it seem like the actions they are performing are coming from your device. In this method, which is known as IP spoofing, hackers perpetrate various illegal activities while concealing identities. Many people employ IP spoofing in DDoS attacks whereby hackers inject tremendous amounts of traffic into a network to actually shut it down. Using your IP address during this attack may keep them undetected while they wreck the damage.

Selling Your IP Address

One seems minute, but hackers sell bundles of thousands of IP addresses in bulk across the dark web, and those addresses can be used in large-scale social engineering projects that lead to data theft. Used with other personal data, your IP address can be a wonderful commodity in some hacker's arsenal, allowing them to crack into almost any online account.

Scanning for Further Information

Using this method, and with the use of such tools as Nmap, hackers can not only obtain your IP but also uncover which OS your machine is running, applications that are installed, and open ports. If vulnerabilities exist in your system, they can launch specific attacks on those particular weaknesses, which will then allow them to get into your network, and even control your devices.

A DDoS attack

Although it is seldom that DDoS attacks any user, hackers can use your IP to attack you using DDoS, which will turn your device into a traffic flooder and take it offline. Such attacks are usually employed in larger organisations, although those engaging in activities such as online gaming and other competitive activities are also at risk. For instance, some players have used DDoS attacks to cut off their opponents' internet.

How to Hide Your IP Address

The likelihood that someone actually targeted you may be low, but this is equally as important to adhere to these safety precaution guidelines. With a virtual private network or a proxy server, your public IP address remains hidden, which makes it extremely hard for hackers to find and take advantage of it. It can also protect your devices by updating them as regularly as possible and using firewalls.

It is important to note that knowing an IP address doesn't give hackers total control over your system. However, it can be part of a scheme that encourages them to come closer to extracting more personal information or conducting attacks. However, usually there's little chance that someone would go out of his way to harm you using just your IP address; still, you can never be too safe. Securing the network and masking the IP simply reduces these risks from IP-based attacks.

Care needs to be taken, and preventative measures need to be in place so that nobody would use those malpractices against you.