Massive DDoS attack on U.S. financial company thwarted by cyber firm

From therecord.media

A cybersecurity company claims it identified and thwarted a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting a prominent American financial institution.

The researchers at Akamai Technologies did not reveal the company’s name but said it is among their “largest and most influential” customers in the financial sector.

DDoS attacks overwhelm websites with a flood of traffic, making them temporarily unavailable to users.

The attack against the company, detected on Tuesday, peaked at 633.7 gigabits of traffic per second. According to the cloud computing company Gcore, as of this year DDoS attacks can reach as high as 800 gbps.

“The attack was sharp but lasted for less than 2 minutes,” Akamai said. The incident didn’t harm or disrupt the victim’s services.

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