An unnamed European DDoS filtering provider recently withstood one of the most intense packet-rate attacks recorded: a peak of 1.5 billion packets per second (PPS), according to FastNetMon. The deluge originated from a distributed botnet of thousands of compromised consumer devices—including IoT equipment and MikroTik routers—and was observed coming from more than 11,000 unique networks worldwide.
Attack vector and scope: UDP flood focused on packet processing
The primary vector was a UDP flood designed to overwhelm packet-processing capacity rather than saturate raw bandwidth. Unlike headline-grabbing attacks measured in Gbps/Tbps, PPS-centric campaigns stress the forwarding and control planes of routers, firewalls, and proxies with a vast number of small packets, rapidly pushing device tables, queues, and pipelines to their limits.
Why PPS matters more than bitrate in many outages
High PPS attacks force expensive lookups, spike CPU or ASIC utilization, and trigger rate-limiting and overload protections. Even when uplinks are not fully saturated in bits, QoS policies degrade, stateful inspection falters, and inline security tools can fail open or introduce latency. This dynamic is well-documented in industry reporting, and echoes lessons from large consumer-device botnets seen since Mirai: without upstream hygiene, home routers and IoT platforms can be weaponized into high-PPS “packet cannons.”
Mitigation in practice: ACLs, targeted blocking, and careful traffic offload
FastNetMon combined the client’s in-house DDoS defenses with rapid perimeter actions. Operators deployed access control lists (ACLs) on edge routers, implemented signature-driven filtering for abusive patterns, and dropped traffic from known amplification sources. This approach contained the malicious vector while minimizing collateral damage, avoiding indiscriminate blackholing of legitimate users.
Effective PPS mitigation typically includes diversion to scrubbing centers, stateless filtering close to the edge, strict per-interface policers, and high-speed packet paths (e.g., kernel bypass) to keep slow-path processing to a minimum. Tight telemetry—sFlow/NetFlow with analytics tuned to packet-rate anomalies—helps detect and localize floods early.
Provider-side responsibility: enforce source validation and rapid isolation
Experts emphasize that resilience to high-PPS DDoS cannot rely solely on enterprise perimeters. Internet service providers (ISPs) must adopt proactive measures: implement IETF BCP 38/84 for ingress/egress filtering to stop spoofed traffic, enable uRPF where feasible to validate source addresses, and operationalize RTBH and BGP Flowspec for fast, granular suppression of malicious flows. These controls reduce botnet effectiveness and shorten time-to-mitigation across the wider Internet.
Second incident and the rise of RDDoS extortion
FastNetMon also reported a nearly identical attack—approximately 1.49 billion PPS—targeting a separate DDoS service provider in Eastern Europe. Indicators suggest the same botnet may have been involved, and the victim received an extortion demand. This aligns with the ongoing shift toward RDDoS (ransom-driven DDoS), where attackers pair operational disruption with financial pressure rather than launching purely “noisy” volumetric events.
Actionable guidance for operators, DDoS providers, and enterprises
Network operators (ISPs): enforce BCP 38/84 and uRPF at scale; pre-stage RTBH and Flowspec playbooks; enable CPU-protection profiles on edge ASICs; implement early-drop ACLs and ingress policing; and automate indicator sharing with CSIRTs/ISACs to accelerate cross-network remediation.
DDoS protection providers: harden for high-PPS scenarios by optimizing state tables and per-packet paths; adopt zero-copy/DPDK or equivalent kernel-bypass; leverage hardware offloads; and conduct stress tests mirroring realistic UDP flood profiles to validate capacity and failover behavior.
Enterprises: patch and lock down routers and IoT devices (including MikroTik), disable unnecessary UDP services and UPnP, apply rate limits and allowlists where possible, and integrate cloud scrubbing with clear runbooks for escalation and routing changes.
The 1.5 billion PPS peak illustrates a tactical shift: adversaries increasingly aim to exhaust packet-processing pipelines using widely distributed consumer-grade endpoints. Organizations should exercise PPS-focused tabletop and red-team scenarios, while providers accelerate deployment of source validation and rapid isolation controls. The earlier the ecosystem blocks spoofing and streamlines mitigation, the fewer opportunities remain for botnets to deliver crippling packet-rate floods.
