{"id":9762,"date":"2026-05-20T15:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/?p=9762"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:34:36","slug":"south-africas-hosting-industry-hit-by-wave-of-unprecedented-ddos-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/south-africas-hosting-industry-hit-by-wave-of-unprecedented-ddos-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s hosting industry hit by wave of unprecedented DDoS attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">South African web hosting companies rarely make headlines for the wrong reasons. Last week, several of them had no choice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">A wave of distributed denial-of-service attacks tore through multiple providers within days, knocking websites, email services, and cloud systems offline across the country. The targets included <a href=\"https:\/\/1grid.co.za\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">1-Grid<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostafrica.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Host Africa<\/a>, Domains.co.za, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Network Platforms, and cloud backup provider <a href=\"https:\/\/datakeepers.co.za\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Datakeepers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The numbers are hard to ignore. The attack on Host Africa reportedly peaked at 1 terabit per second. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.domains.co.za\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Domains.co.za<\/a> absorbed roughly 100 gigabits per second. Liquid was still under active attack when reports first surfaced, having already shut down UDP traffic at 90 gigabits per second just to keep its network breathing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">What made these attacks unusual was the method. Rather than hammering a single IP address, attackers used carpet bombing, spreading traffic across entire IP ranges to overwhelm providers at scale. They paired this with IP fragmentation and DNS amplification, two techniques that exploit how the internet&#8217;s core protocols work. Together, they let attackers punch far above their weight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">Host Africa CEO Michael Osterloh said his team contained the attack within four hours and has since started upgrading infrastructure. He noted something that should concern the broader industry: attacks at this scale are new, but the rising frequency is not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">&#8220;We have not seen attacks with this magnitude before, but we have seen a noticeable rise in the frequency of these attacks as they become easier to access,&#8221; Osterloh told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">That last part matters. <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/radware-targets-encrypted-layer-7-ddos-attacks-without-requiring-ssl-certificate-sharing\/\">DDoS tools<\/a> have grown cheaper and more accessible over time, and <a href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/hostafrica-absorbs-zanode-to-expand-developer-app-hosting-across-south-africa\/\">South Africa<\/a> appears to be feeling that shift in real time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">1-Grid confirmed its attack occurred on 17 May and said services were restored with help from upstream network partners. For at least one customer, though, email had been down for a full week before the company publicly acknowledged the incident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">No group has claimed responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South African web hosting companies rarely make headlines for the wrong reasons. Last week, several of them had no choice. A wave of distributed denial-of-service attacks tore through multiple providers within days, knocking websites, email services, and cloud systems offline across the country. The targets included 1-Grid, Host Africa, Domains.co.za, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Network Platforms, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[6755,4622,6757,6756,6505,6754],"class_list":["post-9762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-1-grid-cyberattack","tag-ddos-attack","tag-dns-amplification","tag-host-africa-ddos-1tbps","tag-south-africa-web-hosting","tag-web-hosting-outage"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>South Africa&#039;s hosting industry hit by wave of unprecedented DDoS attacks - Web Hosting News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hostingdiscussion.com\/news\/south-africas-hosting-industry-hit-by-wave-of-unprecedented-ddos-attacks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"South Africa&#039;s hosting industry hit by wave of unprecedented DDoS attacks - Web Hosting News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"South African web hosting companies rarely make headlines for the wrong reasons. Last week, several of them had no choice. A wave of distributed denial-of-service attacks tore through multiple providers within days, knocking websites, email services, and cloud systems offline across the country. 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