Microsoft says Azure was hit with a massive DDoS attack launched from over 500,000 IP addresses

• Microsoft mitigated a record 15.72 Tbps DDoS attack from Aisuru botnet
• Aisuru, a Mirai-class IoT botnet, controls 300,000+ compromised devices
• Microsoft warns DDoS attacks will grow as IoT and internet speeds scale

Microsoft has said it successfully mitigated, “the largest DDoS attack ever observed in the cloud” after cybercriminals running the Aisuru botnet targeted a single endpoint, located in Australia.

The attack was a sight to behold: more than 500,000 source IPs, across various regions, descended upon the endpoint, delivering a multi-vector Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack measuring 15.72 Tbps and nearly 3.64 billion packets per second (pps).

The majority of the assimilated devices are in residential ISPs in the United States. According to CyberInsider, it now counts more than 300,000 compromised units.

Mitigating the assault

Microsoft described Aisuru as a “Turbo Mirai-class IoT botnet that frequently causes record-breaking DDoS attacks”.

Mirai is one of the biggest, most popular botnets out there, lingering around for almost a decade, which usually works by infecting IoT and smart home devices, such as home routers, DVRs, web cameras, smart speakers, TVs, and others, and then using their internet access to flood their targets with meaningless traffic.

Even though the attack was considered enormous, Microsoft said it successfully mitigated it by using Azure’s globally distributed DDoS Protection infrastructure and continuous detection capabilities.

“Malicious traffic was effectively filtered and redirected, maintaining uninterrupted service availability for customer workloads," the company said.

Aisuru has been making headlines recently, with gaming hosting provider Gcore recently hit by what was, at the time, one of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded.

Gcore said the event was a “short-burst volumetric flood” lasting between 30 and 45 seconds, and peaking at 6Tbps with 5.3 billion packets per second.

Gcore’s analysis revealed that 51% of the malicious data originated in Brazil and nearly 24% came from the United States, and that the activity was consistent with Aisuru.

Microsoft does not think we’ve seen the worst of DDoS attacks yet. “Attackers are scaling with the internet itself,” the report reads. “As fiber-to-the-home speeds rise and IoT devices get more powerful, the baseline for attack size keeps climbing.”

Via BleepingComputer

The best antivirus for all budgets

➡️ Read our full guide to the best antivirus
1. Best overall:
Bitdefender Total Security
2. Best for families:
Norton 360 with LifeLock
3. Best for mobile:
McAfee Mobile Security

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.