Between November 1 and November 11, 2026, DDoS attacks on Russian retailers increased by 2.5 times compared to the same period in 2025 and 4 times compared to October 2026. On November 11, 2026, the number of attacks peaked, showing a 3.5-fold increase year-over-year.
StormWall analysts reported that 34% of these attacks involved bots mimicking AI traffic. This technique exploits the fact that retailers use AI bots to appear in responses from services like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini, making malicious traffic harder to distinguish.
Attackers employed multi-vector methods, carpet bombing, and reconnaissance probes. The average attack power reached 230 Gbps, with peaks hitting 1,200 Gbps. While large retailers utilized professional protection to mitigate these threats, smaller stores faced outages lasting several hours.
The primary motive for these attacks was extortion. Experts anticipate further activity during the upcoming Black Friday period in Russia, scheduled for November 27–29, 2026, and advise businesses to implement robust security measures immediately.
