On December 21st, researchers from Imperva discovered an attack on their network targeting multiple anycasted IPs, dubbed 'Leet'.
The 17-minute DDoS attack peaked at 650 gigabits per second in its second round, with more than 150 million packets per second. The first round lasted 20 minutes and peaked at 400 Gbps, but was unable to make a dent in the network.
Mitigators were unable to uncover the origin of the attack, as it stemmed from a fake IP address.
Even though experts were able to stop this offense, it's going to get worse, according to Imperva researchers.
"Basically, the entire attack was just a mishmash of pulverized system files from thousands upon thousands of compromised devices," the researchers explain. "Specifically, it makes for an effective obfuscation technique that can be used to produce an unlimited number of extremely randomized payloads."
The Mirai botnet was the source of the biggest DDoS on record; it's alarming to see yet another source using compromised devices to launch attacks as we begin the new year.
Fortunately, this attack was quickly mitigated. However, we're sure to be seeing more of the Leet botnet in 2017.