Cloudflare has mitigated the biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on record. Here's what you need to know.

The largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to date peaked at 5.6 terabits per second and came from a Mirai-based botnet with 13,000 compromised devices.

DDoS attacks have only gotten more sophisticated as time goes on. An increasingly popular tactic among bad actors is to hit hard and fast in what are described as 'hypervolumetric' attacks. For instance,

Cloudflare saw a 53% increase in DDoS attack frequency last year, when it blocked a record-breaking 5.6 Tbps attack.