Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have snowballed since the beginning of the digital age. The motive is typically something like extortion or to disrupt the operations of a competing company or an unpopular government. The ferocity of the attacks has snowballed, thanks in large part to the proliferation of botnets and a shift from targeting ISP connections to aiming legitimate-looking requests at servers. Akamai has seen some of the largest DDoS attacks in recent memory, which Ellis described as “huge attacks of more than 120 gigabits per second””]
Source: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2124737/ddos-attacks-are-back–and-bigger-than-before-.html