By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack occurs when an adversary disrupts a system, device, or network by deliberately overwhelming it with traffic.
There are three main types of DDos attacks:
- Volumetric attacks: Traditional DDoS attacks where the attacker exhausts the bandwidth of a server by sending an overwhelming amount of traffic.
- Protocol attacks: DDoS attacks that target vulnerabilities in a network’s communication protocols.
- Application layer attacks: Application layer-based DDoS attacks where an adversary targets a specific part of an application (e.g., a login page) or a vulnerability and sends fake requests to it. This is one of the most advanced types of DDoS attacks because it is hard to detect. Application attacks are leveraged to steal sensitive data and to disrupt the functionality of an application.
On the rise
DDoS is increasingly becoming an attack of choice for malicious actors. In Q3 2025, Cloudflare detected and mitigated 8.3 million DDoS attacks, a 40% increase YoY.
Famous DDoS attacks
There have been several high-profile DDoS attacks on large companies over the years. In 2018, GitHub encountered a 1.35 terabits-per-second DDoS attack that lasted roughly 20 minutes. A DDoS attack aimed at Amazon Web Services in 2020 was one of the largest publicly disclosed of its type at the time, impacting several websites. In 2024, the Internet Archive experienced a DDoS attack that forced it offline for several days.
