India Faces Catastrophic Cyber Onslaught: 85 Million Malicious Requests Deflected by Prophaze

Trivandrum — In the wake of recent escalations between India and Pakistan, India’s critical digital infrastructure faced a coordinated and massive cyber onslaught last week — and emerged unscathed.

In a swift and seamless defense operation, Prophaze Technologies — a leading AI-based cybersecurity platform proudly Made in India — successfully neutralized a series of large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting high-value national entities.

Between May 5 and May 9, 2025, threat actors launched multiple waves of DDoS attacks, with traffic volumes peaking at 85 million malicious requests within a 10-hour window on Friday, signaling a dramatic escalation in cyber threats targeting India’s critical infrastructure.

Cyber Warfare at the Frontlines of Geopolitics

The digital offensive coincided with the intensifying India–Pakistan conflict and was allegedly driven by ideologically aligned cyber actors. Hacktivist groups such as AnonSec, Sylhet Gang (SG), and Dienet publicly claimed responsibility for attempting to take down Indian government services

 — [Assumption: via DDoS-as-a-Service capabilities provided by actors operating from Pakistan].

Despite the scale and aggression of these campaigns, Prophaze reported zero downtime. All systems remained fully operational — denying attackers the disruption they intended.

“We weren’t reacting — we were already defending,” said Vaisakh T.R., Founder & CEO of Prophaze Technologies. “This wasn’t a surprise. We knew the pattern, we saw the intent, and we acted in real time. As a cybersecurity product built in India, we knew what was at stake.” 

The Pattern Behind the Chaos

The first wave hit on Wednesday, May 8, targeting a major Indian airport.  Prophaze threat intelligence team identified consistent traffic patterns and spanning IPs from global distributed botnet activity

This isn’t the first time Prophaze has played a pivotal role in safeguarding national infrastructure. In April 2023, coordinated DDoS attacks on six major Indian airports were similarly neutralized through Prophaze’s intelligent Layer 7 mitigation systems, minimizing disruption and restoring operations swiftly.

[ https://prophaze.com/case_study/layer-7-ddos-protection-for-airports/ ]

In this latest attack, geo-fencing, IP profiling, and behavioral analysis enabled Prophaze to isolate and neutralize the latest threat in record time. By identifying repeated fingerprinting behaviors across global botnets, Prophaze implemented custom WAF rules and real-time anomaly detection, halting the attack within hours.

By Friday, the bulk of malicious traffic had been successfully suppressed. While some regional spikes were observed across India, critical operations remained uninterrupted, with the most intense activity focused on high-value digital entry points.

A Globalized Attack, A Localized Defense

Prophaze’s multi-layered, AI-driven defense stack — built entirely in India to address Indian infrastructure — handled the escalation with precision and agility. The platform deployed a variety of sophisticated strategies, including:

●      Geo-fencing and behavioral IP filtering to block traffic from hostile regions

●      Captchaless browser-based challenge logic to ensure seamless defense

●      Dynamic threat rule deployment to counteract rapidly evolving attack vectors

●      Machine Learning-based anomaly detection to isolate suspicious activity in real-time

●      Live IOC integration to adapt defenses based on the latest intelligence

All services remained publicly accessible and uninterrupted throughout the incident.

Cyber Escalation in a Time of Conflict

Reports from CyberKnow confirm that as of May 2025, 45 hacktivist groups have entered the cyber battlefield as of May 2025, with 35 identified as pro-Pakistan. Tactics like defacement and DDoS to assert influence [Source: CyberKnow].

Further escalation is expected, with global hacktivist circles, including pro-Palestinian actors, threatening to widen their campaign against Indian targets.

India’s Firewall Holds Strong

Throughout the incident, Prophaze’s autonomous threat response systems operated at full scale, delivering real-time intelligence, deploying custom defense rules, and adapting dynamically to evolving attack patterns. With no dependence on foreign vendors or emergency imports, this successful mitigation effort reinforces that India’s digital defense can be self-reliant, sovereign, and resilient.

The incident underscores why Prophaze was recently recognized as a Representative Vendor in Gartner’s 2025 Market Guide for Cloud Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) — solidifying its position as a trusted defense force at the frontlines of cyber warfare.