China's biggest DDoS attack hits registry

The Chinese government is reporting that it experienced its largest-ever distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the weekend.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, which made an announcement about the attacks on Sunday morning, the DDoS strikes were the most severe between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. local time on Sunday, “leading to slow or interrupted [internet] access” for users throughout the country.

The attackers used automated kits and hacked web servers to launch attacks upwards of 70-100 GBps against multiple targets.

The Wall Street Journal, which first publicised the news, discovered through security and site performance service provider CloudFlare that the attacks were directed at the registry allowing “.cn” domain access.

The DDoS attacks resulted in a 32 percent drop in traffic in a 24-hour period, CloudFlare found after analyzing thousands of Chinese domains in its network.

It's not clear who is responsible or what the motive was.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com