When high-stakes events meet unprecedented attack volumes, disruption can be devastating. A Turkish luxury retail platform experienced this firsthand when it was hit with a record-breaking application-layer DDoS attack, peaking at 14.2 million requests per second (RPS). This marks the largest DDoS attack Imperva has observed to date.
The timing wasn’t accidental. The attack began just as the retailer launched its fall/winter 2025 collection, a key sales moment expected to drive heavy customer engagement and significant online revenue. By choosing this critical window, attackers likely aimed to maximize disruption, frustrate legitimate customers, and erode consumer trust in the platform’s reliability.
Why High-Traffic Launches Are Prime Targets
Luxury retail brands depend on smooth online experiences to maintain reputation and momentum. Collection drops often drive traffic surges, which, while great for business, also creates a perfect cover for DDoS operators. A well-timed attack can:
- Interrupt service and push customers toward competitors
- Create negative headlines that damage brand reputation
- Force companies to shift resources from launch operations to incident response
- Undermine future campaigns if consumer confidence is shaken
This record-breaking attack highlights how strategic timing amplifies the impact of large-scale campaigns, particularly in industries where every second of uptime directly affects revenue.
Figure 1: Traffic vs RPS in the weeks before and after the attack
Tactics Behind the Largest DDoS Attack Observed to Date
This attack grabbed attention not just because of when it happened, but because of its sheer scale and pinpoint precision. At its peak, it slammed servers with a staggering 14.2 million requests per second, the largest we’ve ever recorded, over just about an hour. More than 8,200 unique IPs were involved, sending traffic surging 821% above normal levels.
Compared to the site’s usual traffic, which sees overwhelmingly Turkish traffic, attack traffic global, coming from IPs in Germany, the US, Russia, Singapore, and more. Attacks came overwhelmingly from clients listed as Chrome or as basic bots, contrasting with the site’s average Safari traffic.
Figure 2: Traffic source country by hour
Figure 3: Client breakdown by hour
Application-layer floods are particularly effective during major events because they mimic legitimate traffic. During launch periods, the signal-to-noise ratio shifts, making it harder to distinguish attackers from real customers without advanced mitigation. Another helpful feature, Imperva’s Adaptive Threshold, automatically analyzes daily traffic patterns and dynamically sets the optimal threshold for L7 mitigation, eliminating the need for manual threshold positives and reducing false positives.
A Growing Trend: DDoS Campaigns Targeting High-Value Events
This record-breaking event isn’t an outlier, it’s part of an escalating trend. Imperva has observed a steady increase in the size and sophistication of DDoS campaigns, particularly against industries where online traffic spikes are predictable, such as retail, financial services, and ticketing. Over the past three years, DDoS levels have noticeably increased, particularly in the last year. These spikes have targeted retailers, banks, beverage companies, and educational sites, among others.
Figure : DDoS Max RPS by Month, 2023-now
Luxury retail in particular is a high-value target because launches and collection drops create predictable windows of heavy traffic. Customers expect a seamless and exclusive shopping experience, so even minor performance hiccups can lead not only to immediate revenue loss but also to long-term damage to the brand’s reputation.
How Imperva Protects Against Record-Breaking Attacks
Imperva’s DDoS Protection for Applications is built to handle events exactly like this at unprecedented scale. Our global network automatically detects and mitigates malicious traffic in real time, preserving availability and performance for legitimate users.
Key capabilities include:
- Real-time mitigation at the edge to absorb massive surges
- Application-layer intelligence to differentiate bots from humans
- Global network capacity to handle record-breaking peaks
- Adaptive rate limiting to maintain user experience even during attacks
This retailer was protected and sustained launch-day traffic without downtime, preserving both revenue and brand trust during one of its most critical moments of the year.
Takeaway
The largest DDoS attack observed to date underscores a key reality: attackers are increasingly timing campaigns to maximize impact, often targeting high-profile events like product launches when businesses are most vulnerable.
Organizations can’t control when they’ll be targeted, but they can control their resilience. Proactive protection, real-time visibility, and intelligent traffic filtering are essential to defend against today’s record-breaking threats and ensure brand trust remains intact. Imperva’s Advanced DDoS Protection defends against volumetric, protocol-based, and Layer 7 attacks, ensuring fast mitigation and business continuity with a 3-second SLA.
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