Massive L7 DDoS Botnet Exploits 5.76M Hijacked Devices for Record Attacks

In a stark reminder of how vulnerable online services remain, Qrator Labs has revealed that a sprawling Layer 7 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet has swelled to over 5.76 million compromised devices, unleashing unprecedented traffic against critical infrastructures.

Monitored since late March, the botnet has been used in a series of three large-scale attacks that demonstrate both its rapid growth and the formidable challenge it poses to current DDoS mitigation strategies.

The botnet’s inaugural assault was detected on March 26, when approximately 1.33 million unique IP addresses converged on an online betting organization’s web applications.

Qrator Labs’ telemetry data shows that the majority of participating devices hailed from Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Iraq, and Mexico.

Within minutes, the targeted servers were inundated with HTTP GET requests designed to exhaust application-layer resources, resulting in service degradation and intermittent outages for end users.

Security teams scrambled to ...