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Cloudflare reported that a 2.5Tbps DDoS attack hit Minecraft server Wynncraft amid an increase in such attacks globally.
Wynncraft, a popular Minecraft server, was targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack recently – the largest that DDoS mitigation company Cloudflare has ever seen in terms of bit rate.
The attack, launched by a Mirai botnet variant, had a bit rate of 2.5Tbps. A higher bit rate increases the speed and scale of DDoS attacks, which attempt to make online services unavailable by overwhelming them with high volumes of data from multiple sources.
According to Bleeping Computer, a DDoS attack this large last occurred in 2017, in a campaign that lasted for six months from a nation-state actor, disclosed by Google in 2020.
Cloudflare revealed the latest Minecraft server attack as part of its threat report for the third quarter of 2022. Overall, it found that there has been an increase in DDoS attacks over last year, especially in attacks that are generated by the Mirai botnet and its variants.
The gaming industry has been one of the big targets of DDoS attacks recently, according to Cloudflare. A report from Akamai Technologies earlier this year also found that cyberattacks targeting the gaming industry have risen rapidly amid the sector’s recent boom.
In June, Cloudflare said it was able to detect and mitigate a record-breaking DDoS attack that generated more than 212m requests from more than 1,500 networks in less than 30 seconds.
Its latest report suggests that HTTP DDoS attacks have risen 111pc year-on-year. The two most targeted countries were Taiwan, where DDoS attacks over HTTP increased by 200pc, and Japan, where there was a 105pc increase.
In terms of source countries for DDoS attacks, China led the way. This was followed by India, the US and Brazil. Germany, which came in just after Brazil, was the largest source of DDoS attacks of any European country.
There was a quarterly drop in DDoS attack traffic originating in Ukrainian and Russian IP addresses, even though the figures have increased year on year.
“Over the years, it has become easier, cheaper and more accessible for attackers and attackers-for-hire to launch DDoS attacks,” said Cloudflare researcher Omer Yoachimik.
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