A major cloud infrastructure provider was hit by a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack measuring 4.2 terabits per second, surpassing the previous record by nearly 40%.

The attack, which lasted approximately 14 minutes, targeted the provider’s DNS infrastructure and briefly disrupted services for thousands of websites and applications worldwide.

“This represents a significant escalation in attack capability,” said Dr. Rachel Kim, Chief Security Officer at the affected company. “The botnet behind this attack leveraged compromised IoT devices across 130 countries.”

In response, major cloud providers have announced a collaborative initiative to develop next-generation DDoS mitigation technologies, including AI-powered traffic analysis and decentralized defense networks.