DDoS Attack Trends for Q4 2021

In 2021, there was a significant increase in ransom DDoS attacks and application-layer DDoS attacks, with the manufacturing industry being the most targeted sector. The second half of the year saw record-breaking HTTP DDoS attacks and network-layer attacks observed over the Cloudflare network. China topped the charts as the country with the highest percentage of attack traffic originating from its networks. Ransom DDoS attacks increased by 29% YoY and 175% QoQ, while application-layer DDoS attacks saw a surge in the manufacturing industry. The Business Services and Gaming/Gambling industries were also heavily targeted. Cloudflare's systems automatically mitigated an almost 2 Tbps attack in November, which was a combination of DNS amplification attacks and UDP floods.