Yandex, the most prominent Russian Internet firm, recently experienced an extensive denial-of-service DDoS attack that it claimed was the most significant DDoS attack in the history of RuNet.

DDoS attacks are characterized by an enormous number of bots targeting computer devices and networks. Following the infection, the bots spread laterally to several hosts and networks across various locations and trigger a denial of service response that shuts down the network.

Reports suggest that the enormity and nature of the incident were initially confirmed by an American cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. Yandex alleged that the attack began in August and reached a peak on the 5th of September.

Biggest DDoS attack peaking at 21.8 Million RPS:

The Russian tech giant said that it detected 5.2 million RPS on the 7th of August, 6.5 million on the 9th, and a record-breaking 21.8 million RPS on the 5th of September. In an official statement, authorities from Yandex stated that "Our experts did manage to repel a record attack of nearly 22 million requests per second (RPS). This is the biggest known attack in the history of the internet."

Alexander Lyamin, CEO of Qrator Labs, revealed that the DDoS attack was launched by a new DDoS botnet, tracked as Mēris.

Even though the attack unfolded on an enormous scale, it did not affect services and user data associated with the Russian firm. The information regarding the nature of the attack and the operators behind it is very narrow, but the company described the attack as a threat to infrastructure on a national scale.

According to a spokesperson from Yandex, "Yandex did indeed undergo a DDoS attack, which was reflected by our network infrastructure and the system for filtering unwanted requests. " Several reports from Vedomosti stated that "the attack was largest in RuNet's."

Spike in DDoS Attacks:

Recently, Cloudflare, one of the most significant web infrastructure and security companies, revealed on the 19th of August that it alleviated the most massive volumetric Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack ever recorded, peaking at 17.2 Million RPS. The company claimed that the attackers abused a Mirai Botnet that had already affected more than 20,000 devices to dump HTTP requests on the customer's network to utilize and crash the server resources.

Cyber experts from many leading firms have claimed that 2021 will be yet another record year for the number of DDoS attacks conducted worldwide. Attackers launched nearly 2.9 million DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2021, a 31% spike in number from 2020.