The New DDoS Landscape

Recent trends show that DDoS attacks have become more sophisticated and are now targeting applications rather than just network layers. This shift is due to the increased capacity of networks, making it harder for attackers to overwhelm victims with junk traffic. As a result, attackers have started using advanced application-layer attack strategies such as botnets, IoT devices, and DNS amplification. Cloudflare has observed a dramatic reduction in simple attempts to flood its network with junk traffic, but the frequency of Application Layer DDoS attacks remains high. To mitigate these attacks, it is crucial for applications to have a high-capacity DDoS mitigation network, aggressive caching, and rate limiting.