Google recently fended off one of the largest Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks witnessed to date, peaking at over 398 million requests per second.

They pointed out a vulnerability in the HTTP/2 protocol in the announcement, which, if not addressed, could be exploited for a successful attack.

This particular DDoS attack was 7.5 times bigger than the previous record holder registered in August and generated a higher request volume in two minutes than the total number of article views on Wikipedia in the entire month of September 2023.

The tech giant explained that the HTTP/2 protocol, designed to create multiple data streams simultaneously, was at risk.

Unlike the recent Sony hack, a DDoS attack could shut down a website or online service by swarming it with an overwhelming volume of requests.

Google admitted, "Unfortunately, the features that make HTTP/2 more efficient for legitimate clients can also be used to make DDoS attacks more efficient". They also divulged working with other industry stakeholders to highlight this vulnerability and devise a solution.

According to Google, the potential fallout of a successful DDoS attack could involve losing access to online services, including banking, social media accounts, and online gaming.

This demonstrates once more, the real-world implications of cyber-attacks.