Cloudflare, the web infrastructure giant, has said that it has successfully mitigated the “the largest attack ever disclosed publicly.” In its 2025 Q4 DDoS Threat Report (via Bleeping Computer), the company detailed a ‘record-breaking’ bombardment by the Aisuru/Kimwolf botnet, which peaked at a 31.4 Terabits per second (Tbps). Cloudflare came into spotlight after hundreds of websites were down in November.The report said that the hacking campaign was dubbed “The Night Before Christmas”, and targeted telecommunications providers, IT organisations and Cloudflare’s own dashboard infrastructure on December 19, 2025. It also claimed that the attack was “hyper-volumetric”, which means that it relied on sheer force to overwhelm networks. “The campaign targeted Cloudflare customers as well as Cloudflare’s dashboard and infrastructure with hyper-volumetric HTTP DDoS attacks exceeding rates of 200 million requests per second (rps) alongside Layer 4 DDoS attacks peaking at 31.4 Terabits per second, making it the largest attack ever disclosed publicly,” Cloudflare said in the report.
Cloudflare says automated systems detected, mitigated attacks
Cloudflare reported that its automated systems detected and neutralised the threats so efficiently that no internal human alerts were even triggered. The company also reported that unlike other attacks which utilise compromised routers or basic Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the “Night Before Christmas” campaign came from compromised Android TVs.According to the web infrastructure giant, most of these attacks were short-lived but intense. About 50% of them lasted between one and two minutes, and 90% of the attacks peaked between 1–5 Tbps. Furthermore, the largest source of the year’s attacks was reported to be from Bangladesh, followed by Ecuador, Indonesia and Argentina.When it comes to targets, China and Hong Kong were the most frequently attacked countries. Aisuru botnet previously held the record at 29.7 Tbps and once being attributed to a 15.72 Tbps attack on Microsoft. In 2025, Cloudflare recorded a 121% increase in DDoS incidents compared to 2024, totaling 47.1 million unique attacks.
About the Author
