DDoS attacks surge in early 2025
DDoS attacks surged in the first quarter of 2025, rising 198% from the end of 2024 and a massive 358% compared to the same time last year, with gaming servers hit the hardest. These findings come from a recent report published by Cloudflare.
Between January and March 2025, Cloudflare blocked approximately 20.5 million DDoS attempts. Of those, 6.6 million were aimed directly at the company’s infrastructure. Outside of that, gaming platforms emerged as the primary targets, with popular titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch experiencing a wave of disruptions.
The most intense DDoS attack during this time peaked at 5.6 terabits per second. However, an even larger attack recorded on April 24th soon broke that record, reaching 5.8 terabits per second.
A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack overwhelms a server or network with excessive traffic, preventing it from functioning properly. These attacks can effectively knock services offline by exhausting their capacity to respond. Over the years, major platforms like Spotify, GitHub, and Microsoft’s Outlook and OneDrive have all fallen victim to such attacks.
