DDoS Attacks Surge Against Government After Protests

Earlier this year, during widespread protests in a country of over 50 million people, government systems faced a major cyberattack. In the midst of public unrest over tax hikes and healthcare reforms, a coordinated DDoS attack targeted government networks in three separate waves. The goal was clear: overwhelm infrastructure and disrupt operations. This became a real-world test of effective government DDoS attack response.

The first wave reached 9Gbps within 30 seconds, catching officials off guard. The government had Radware DefensePro devices already installed across its data centers and had successfully used them in past incidents. But the sheer intensity of this attack prompted them to call in Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) for backup.

Within hours, Radware onboarded the government onto its Cloud DDoS Protection Service in Always-On mode. Traffic was rerouted to one of Radware’s global scrubbing centers, where it could be filtered and cleaned before reaching internal networks. This hybrid setup ensured full-time monitoring and attack mitigation.

In a parallel move, the government contacted two local ISPs that used other mitigation vendors, but they were unable to block the traffic before it hit the core infrastructure. Fortunately, Radware’s systems absorbed the impact, and network performance remained stable.

The second and third waves followed shortly after, one reaching 135Gbps within minutes. Thanks to the preemptive cloud redirection, there was no downtime or disruption.

This incident shows the importance of being ready for large-scale attacks with layered defenses. A strong government DDoS attack response strategy requires not just technology, but speed, scale, and real-time coordination. The hybrid model of on-premise and cloud-based mitigation proved critical in maintaining uptime and public service delivery during a volatile period.

Read the full article here to see just how effective the multiple Radware DefensePro devices installed in all of the government data centers were and how catastrophic this attack could have been if the hackers succeeded.