The Attack That's Faster Than Your Response Time
2025 has rewritten the rules of DDoS attacks. When Cloudflare published its Q1 report, the numbers were shocking: 358 percent more attacks than a year earlier. That's over 20.5 million DDoS attacks in a single quarter—nearly matching the entire year of 2024.
But what's truly alarming isn't the quantity. The largest, most devastating attacks—sending up to 11.5 terabits of data per second—lasted merely 35-45 seconds. That's shorter than reading an email or reviewing a ticket. This is precisely the problem: this timeframe is too brief for any human intervention to stop it.
Let's walk through a typical response process: you notice something's wrong—that takes about 10 seconds. You log into the server or open your monitoring system—another 10-15 seconds. You identify the problem and alert your team—another 10 seconds. At this point, you haven't even begun defending. By the time you'd start taking action, the attack is already over. But your website? It's already down.
Why Exactly 35 Seconds?
Attackers have learned a great deal over the years. Old-style DDoS attacks lasted hours or even days. They were predictable, noticeable, and ultimately stoppable. But modern attacks follow a different philosophy: cripple the target just long enough to cause serious damage, but fast enough that response becomes impossible.
Statistics show that in Q1 2025, 89 percent of network layer attacks lasted less than 10 minutes, while 75 percent of HTTP attacks fell into the same category. The most severe so-called hypervolumetic attacks—exceeding 1 terabit per second or 1 billion packets per second—averaged 35-45 seconds. This isn't coincidental: attackers count on it being too fast for anyone to react.
There's another trick: the multi-wave strategy. Q1 2025 saw an 18-day campaign containing over 13.5 million separate attacks. When the IT team finally dealt with one wave, the next one was already incoming. Continuous, repeated strikes that exhaust defenders and maintain chaos.
Who's the Target? Anyone Can Be
The biggest mistake is thinking DDoS attacks only affect large multinational corporations. The reality is far less comfortable: a significant portion of attacks specifically target small and medium-sized businesses that typically lack dedicated security teams or sophisticated defense systems.
In Q1 2025, 6.6 million of the recorded attacks directly targeted Cloudflare's own infrastructure, while another 6.9 million hit various hosting providers. The latter is particularly concerning: when a hosting provider is attacked, all websites hosted there become unreachable simultaneously. One attack, dozens or even hundreds of victims.
Gaming servers were also popular targets. One American hosting provider suffered an attack sending 1.5 billion packets per second, in multiple waves, over 18 days. The targets were servers for Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and similar games. The logic is simple: if game servers are slow or unavailable, players move elsewhere. And that elsewhere is often a rival provider.
But it's not just games. An Eastern European independent news portal was attacked after reporting on a local Pride march. E-commerce companies suffer regular attacks during major campaigns or seasonal peaks. B2B services are hit precisely when they're conducting important demos or presentations.
The Competitor Attacking From the Shadows
Here comes an uncomfortable truth: when Cloudflare asked companies who had suffered attacks whether they knew who was behind them, most answered no. This is understandable—DDoS attacks are attractive precisely because they're difficult to trace. But among those who knew or strongly suspected, 39 percent identified a competitor.
This is especially common in the gaming and gambling industries, where competitor attacks have become almost part of doing business. E-commerce is seeing more of these cases too, particularly during major campaigns or Black Friday-type events. The logic is brutal but simple: rent a botnet for a few thousand dollars, launch a well-timed attack—and your competitor goes down for hours while customers come to you instead.
Why Traditional Defense Doesn't Work
Many believe a powerful server or enterprise firewall provides adequate protection. The reality is brutal. A typical enterprise firewall can handle approximately 1-10 gigabits of traffic per second. A modern hypervolumetic attack? Over 1,000 gigabits. The largest attack recorded in 2025 reached 11.5 terabits—equivalent to trying to download 2.5 million HD movies simultaneously.
Even if you had enough bandwidth—which would cost hundreds of thousands or millions monthly—your infrastructure still couldn't handle the load. The problem isn't just quantitative. A DDoS attack is like thousands trying to enter through a single door simultaneously. It doesn't matter how large the room is if the doorway is the bottleneck.
Human response time has simply become irrelevant. The 35-second attacks exploit precisely this weakness: they're too fast for any manual response. By the time you comprehend what's happening and begin taking action, it's already over. But your website? It's already down.
The Automation That Works
Cloudflare's 2025 results clearly demonstrate why automatic defense works. They blocked over 700 hypervolumetic attacks in a single quarter—averaging 8 attacks per day exceeding 1 terabit per second. Not a single one required manual intervention.
The system works simply: when an attack arrives, the global network—with 388 terabits of capacity present in over 330 cities—automatically identifies and blocks all malicious traffic. It's not your small server trying to process the attack, but a massive, distributed network absorbing it. Legitimate customers receive an uninterrupted experience; no one notices that a massive attack is happening in the background.
Most importantly: this happens without human intervention. No response time, no decision-making, no panic. Protection is already active, automatic, and working before the attack could even reach your website. This is the only way to defend against 35-second attacks: with a system faster than the attack itself.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Consider this: 20.5 million attacks in a single quarter. That's 96 percent of the entire 2024 annual figure. And this was just the first quarter. The trend is clear: attack numbers are growing rapidly and becoming increasingly destructive.
But perhaps more important: how many businesses survived under Cloudflare protection? How much revenue wasn't lost? How many customers didn't go to competitors because services continued uninterrupted? These numbers can't be precisely measured, but they're perhaps the most important. Every blocked attack represents an event that would otherwise have meant downtime, revenue loss, and customer attrition.
Don't Wait for the Attack
The question today isn't whether your business will be attacked. The statistics are clear: 358 percent growth in one year, increasingly faster and more destructive attacks, and more targets. The question is whether you're prepared.
35 seconds. That's all it takes for years of building an online presence to become unreachable. Unless you have automatic protection that's faster than the attack itself.
Protect your business from next-generation DDoS attacks! Gloster Cloud's Cloudflare experts will help establish comprehensive defense solutions—before it's too late.
