Carpet Bombing DDoS Attacks: Why They bypass Traditional Defences

Carpet Bombing DDoS Attacks: Why They bypass Traditional Defences

As Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to evolve, threat actors are shifting toward more advanced and precise methods to evade modern protection systems. Among these, carpet bombing DDoS attacks have emerged as one of the most effective and disruptive techniques—specifically designed to overwhelm an organization’s entire IP range rather than a single target.

This new attack strategy has proven extremely successful against infrastructures protected by load balancers, firewalls, CDNs, or cloud-based mitigation services. But why is carpet bombing so effective—and why do traditional defences fail to stop it?

Let’s explore the mechanics of this attack vector, its real-world impact, and how organizations can test their resilience against it.

What Is a Carpet-Bombing DDoS Attack?

A carpet-bombing attack distributes traffic evenly across multiple IP addresses within a specific subnet—often a /24 block or larger.
Instead of directing all traffic to a single server, attackers flood every host inside the IP range with low-to-medium traffic volumes.

Traditional DDoS

Hit one target → Overload one system.

Carpet Bombing

Hit dozens or hundreds of targets simultaneously → Overload the entire infrastructure.

This technique makes detection and mitigation dramatically harder because:

• No single server sees a “massive spike”
• Total traffic volume is still enormous
• Protection systems fail to trigger thresholds
• Logging appears normal on a per-IP level
• Load balancers cannot offload the distributed load
• Firewalls/WAFs become overwhelmed by aggregate traffic

Why Organizations Must Test Against Carpet Bombing

Most companies only test single-target DDoS scenarios.

This creates a dangerous blind spot:

- “We protected our main IP.”

But what about the other 254 IPs?

- “Our firewall blocks SYN floods.”

But can it block 100 simultaneous SYN floods?

- “Our ISP has mitigation.”

But can it detect low-rate traffic across an entire subnet?

Carpet bombing proves that even well-protected infrastructures can fail quickly when exposed to distributed, low-volume attack patterns.

How LoDDoS Helps You Test Carpet Bombing Safely

LoDDoS includes an advanced Carpet-Bombing Testing Module that lets organizations test distributed traffic across any IP block (e.g., /28, /24, /20) in a fully controlled environment.

LoDDoS Carpet Bombing Capabilities:

• Even traffic distribution across selected IP ranges
• Configurable bandwidth and bot count, allowing flexible traffic generation for volumetric scenarios.
• Multi-vector (3 simultaneous vectors per test)
• Multi-layer monitoring: L3, L4, L7
• Global botnet origin: 4,000+ bots, 240+ Gbps capacity
• AI-powered post-test mitigation insights

This allows security teams to:

• Identify vulnerable subnets
• Stress-test firewalls, TMS, and ISP protection
• Validate scrubbing center capacity
• Detect saturation bottlenecks
• Train SOC teams on distributed attack scenarios

With LoDDoS, you can test real-world carpet-bombing scenarios at scale, uncover hidden weaknesses, and strengthen your defences with actionable intelligence.

No theoretical assumptions. Just real, safe, controlled test.

Contact LoDDoS today to run a carpet-bombing readiness test.
Let’s ensure your infrastructure stays resilient—no matter how distributed the attack becomes.