More than 9.1 million distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were recorded globally in the first half of 2026, as a sharp rise in high-capacity incidents and increasingly short attacks put pressure on telecommunications networks and enterprise defences.
The company recorded attacks across 209 countries and territories between January and June, a 14% increase on the second half of 2025.
NETSCOUT recorded more than 2.08 million attacks against wired communications and 2.84 million against wireless communications, bringing the combined total to nearly 5 million.
Carpet-bombing attacks, which distribute traffic across multiple addresses or parts of a network, rose from 3.97% to 4.54% of attacks.
The report is based on attack traffic directly observed by NETSCOUT through its global network visibility and mitigation infrastructure.