Spat between two Dutch companies sparks record-breaking 300Gbps DDoS attack

Insulting the honor of alleged Dutch spammers may not be the smartest idea. The New York Times reports that a fight between Dutch anti-spam group Spamhaus and Dutch hosting company Cyberbunker has resulted in the world’s largest recorded distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which peaked at speeds of 300Gbps this week. The spat between the firms started when Spamhaus added Cyberbunker to its blacklist, which is designed to help email providers block alleged spammers. Shortly after Spamhaus blacklisted Cyberbunker, which says it on its website that it will host any data not related to child pornography or terrorism, the anti-spam group was hit by an enormous DDoS attack that is described by Akamai Networks chief architect Patrick Gilmore as “the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.”