Cloudflare recently reported successfully mitigating the largest recorded distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which peaked at an astonishing 3.8 terabits per second (Tbps). This attack targeted various organizations within the financial services, internet, and telecommunications sectors, marking a significant escalation in the scale of DDoS threats. The assault unfolded over a month, characterized by over 100 hyper-volumetric attacks that inundated the network infrastructure with excessive data, effectively overwhelming it. In a volumetric DDoS attack, the objective is to flood the target with massive amounts of data, consuming their bandwidth and exhausting the resources of applications and devices. This leaves legitimate users unable to access the services. The recent attacks were particularly intense, with many exceeding two billion packets per second and three Tbps. The compromised devices involved in these attacks were globally distributed, with a notable concentration in countries such as Russia, Vietnam, the United States, Brazil, and Spain. The threat actor behind this campaign utilized a diverse array of compromised devices, including Asus home routers, MikroTik systems, DVRs, and web servers. Cloudflare managed to autonomously mitigate all the DDoS attacks, with the peak attack lasting a mere 65 seconds. The attacks primarily employed the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which allows for rapid data transfers without the need for a formal connection, making it a favored method for such assaults. Prior to this incident, Microsoft held the record for defending against the largest volumetric DDoS attack, which peaked at 3.47 Tbps and targeted an Azure customer in Asia. Typically, DDoS attackers rely on extensive networks of infected devices, known as botnets, or seek methods to amplify the data sent to the target, which can be achieved with fewer systems. In a related report, Akamai, a cloud computing company, highlighted vulnerabilities in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) that could be exploited for DDoS attacks. Their research indicated that over 58,000 systems were exposed to potential DDoS attacks due to these vulnerabilities. Testing revealed that numerous vulnerable CUPS servers could repeatedly send thousands of requests, demonstrating a significant risk for amplification attacks. This incident underscores the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats, particularly the increasing scale and sophistication of DDoS attacks, and the importance of robust defenses against such challenges.