Cloudflare Mitigates 18.2 Million Network-Layer DDoS Attacks in Q3 2026, Up 38% Year-Over-Year

Cloudflare disclosed Thursday that its platforms autonomously mitigated 18.2 million network-layer (L3) DDoS attacks and 14.4 trillion HTTP DDoS requests in the third quarter of 2026. The figure translates to roughly 8,226 network-layer attacks per hour and 197,400 attacks per day, marking a 38% increase from the same quarter in 2025.

The company did not attribute the attacks to a specific threat actor or campaign, noting only that the volume and frequency of DDoS activity have risen significantly. Both network-layer floods targeting infrastructure layers and application-layer HTTP floods were observed at scale. Cloudflare's automated systems handled the majority of the traffic without customer intervention.

The report reflects a broader trend of increasing DDoS activity observed across the industry. While the data represents mitigated attempts, the scale of observed traffic indicates that threat actors continue to expand their capabilities in both volume and persistence. No specific victim organizations or exploitation details were provided in the release.