The Philippines ranked as the second most attacked country worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a report from Cloudflare, a software solutions provider. This is the first time the country has appeared in Cloudflare’s global DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) trends report, trailing China.
Taiwan took third place in the rankings, climbing seven spots from the previous quarter.
Cloudflare reported blocking around 21.3 million DDoS attacks in 2024, an increase of 53% from the previous year. On average, the company blocked 4,870 attacks per hour.
The report showed that DDoS attacks are becoming more powerful. Over 420 of the attacks were extremely large, sending more than 1 billion packets per second (pps) or over 1 terabit per second (Tbps) of data. The number of attacks bigger than 1 Tbps increased nearly 19 times compared to the previous quarter.
One of the biggest attacks happened during Halloween week. A botnet, made up of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices, launched a massive 5.6 Tbps DDoS attack. It targeted an Internet provider in Eastern Asia and lasted only 80 seconds. Cloudflare’s automated defense system stopped the attack without any help from people.
Most attacked industries
“This milestone underscores the importance of automated DDoS protection,” Cloudflare said in the report. “The speed and scale of modern attacks leave no room for manual mitigation.”
Telecommunications companies became the most common targets in the fourth quarter, replacing the Internet and Marketing industries, which ranked second and third. Banks and financial services, previously the top target, dropped to eighth place.
Most DDoS attacks did not last long. About 72% of website attacks ended in under 10 minutes, and 91% of network-level attacks were also brief. The short duration of these attacks makes it hard for people to respond in time, so always-on, automated protection is crucial.
While most attacks are small, the rise in large-scale attacks shows that businesses across industries need stronger cybersecurity to stay safe.