2025 Q4 DDoS threat report: A record-setting 31.4 Tbps attack caps a year of massive DDoS assaults

Cloudflare's 24th Quarterly DDoS Threat Report provides an extensive analysis of the evolving landscape of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for 2025, highlighting a significant 121% increase in such attacks compared to previous years. The report focuses on the fourth quarter of 2025, when the Aisuru-Kimwolf botnet launched "The Night Before Christmas" campaign, characterized by hyper-volumetric HTTP DDoS attacks exceeding 200 million requests per second. Throughout the year, Cloudflare mitigated an average of 5,376 attacks per hour, with network-layer DDoS attacks tripling in volume. The telecommunications sector emerged as the most targeted industry, while the United Kingdom experienced a dramatic rise in attack frequency, becoming the sixth most-attacked location. Cloudflare's autonomous defense systems successfully detected and mitigated these threats, emphasizing the importance of robust, cloud-based DDoS protection for organizations worldwide. The report underscores the need for continuous adaptation to the growing sophistication and scale of DDoS attacks, as attackers increasingly leverage global cloud infrastructure and telecommunications networks.