The role of VPNs in mitigating DDoS attacks on hosted websites

Virtual private networks can help reduce the impact of hacking attacks on websites.

Seven terabits per second. That was the record-breaking traffic spike slamming into Cloudflare’s network in May 2025, which it later revealed was the biggest distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) surge yet recorded. The company absorbed it by routing the flood through hundreds of global relay points.

But for others, one route to try and absorb that level of traffic is to deploy virtual private networks (VPNs) as a first line of DDoS defence, not just a privacy accessory.

Volumetric attacks need fixed IPs. One solution is to tunnel traffic through a VPN gateway, and the origin address vanishes from public view. Add anycast routing, and the target disperses across dozens of locations.

The combination of both has seen rapid adoption: Cloudflare’s own security logs counted 21.3 million DDoS attempts in 2024, more than 420 topping a terabit per second. Some estimates say organisations using VPN-backed shielding reported roughly half as many outages as those without masking. Each new attack peak (5.6 Tbps on Halloween 2024, 6.5 Tbps in April 2025) is replaced within months, as shown by the 7.3 Tbps attack in May.

Where the shield cracks

But hackers hiding behind spoofed IPs is not foolproof. Sometimes things go wrong, and in late 2023, a 1.9 Tbps Mirai attack hit a European cloud host after its origin IP leaked via compromised credentials. With the mask gone, the DDoS attack became obvious, and the service was able to take the full brunt of the attack.

Corporate VPN gateways add another weak spot for hackers to exploit. Those gateways concentrate remote-access traffic, meaning that if you overwhelm the box, employees can lose the network, even if their core systems stay healthy. Analysts logged more than 7 million DDoS hits, many of which will have been on VPN concentrators, in the last half of 2023 alone.

The issue isn’t felt by businesses alone. Consumer VPNs can also be brittle. Many individuals rent modest data-centre space, but once a terabit-scale flood arrives, their upstream links buckle. For smaller sites that rely on these services, a VPN is only thin protection against such attacks.

Layered defence, not silver bullet

Therefore, a combination of approaches is needed to protect against these attacks. Providers now combine VPN tunnelling with packet scrubbing, rate-limiting, and adaptive filters. Hybrid models keep a minimal on-premises filter for day-to-day noise while shifting large floods to a high-capacity cloud.

Another trend being deployed across hosting providers is zero-trust network access. Instead of one large gateway, zero-trust network access spins up short-lived, app-specific tunnels.

The smaller targets mean their attacks are more easily isolated. Latency rises, and the complication of configuration grows, but at least there is no single choke point to crush. But Bandwidth wars are only part of the story. Google researchers recently documented an HTTP/2 “rapid-reset” method that sidesteps bandwidth limits by hammering session tables. If packet floods fail, protocol tricks may work.

VPNs: one of many tools

VPNs are, therefore, a necessary but incomplete part of the defence against DDoS attacks. Their worth depends on three factors.

One is keeping the origin secret, because one leak cancels the protection.

Another is ensuring that the VPN provider’s capacity is high. A VPN’s shield is only as strong as the backbone absorbing the load. And backup can help. Scrubbers, firewalls, and behavioural analytics plug the remaining gaps.

The harsh reality for website owners is that terabit-scale DDoS attacks are no longer exceptional events. They already threaten payment portals, hospital systems, and major game launches. Site owners ought to assume the next record-breaking attack is around the corner, and invest in defences designed to degrade gracefully rather than fail outright.

Which makes VPNs a key component in their arsenal. Used judiciously alongside layered controls, they can buy website owners critical breathing room. If they’re used alone, they risk becoming yet another bottleneck. But they’re a necessary element of the defence of a website.