Traffic spikes, then outages
Cloudflare data shows that Internet traffic in Israel and Palestine reacted differently to the October 7 attack and the ensuing conflict. Traffic in Israel surged sharply, while autonomous systems in the Gaza Strip went offline within hours. By October 9, two additional networks had also dropped off the Internet, and both Israeli and Palestinian targets saw distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
When the attack began at approximately 03:30 UTC (06:30 local time), overall traffic in Israel and Palestine increased dramatically. Around 03:35 UTC, Israel saw traffic grow about 170% compared to the previous week; Palestine saw about 100% growth during the same period.
This surge pattern is consistent with past events when Internet usage climbs as people check news and messaging and social media apps. But in Palestine, that initial rise reversed sharply around 08:00 UTC (11:00 local time).
Breaking down the Palestine numbers by HTTP requests confirms the trend. Requests there fell about 20% on Saturday, October 7, and 25% on Sunday, October 8, compared to typical volumes.
Networks offline in Gaza
The traffic drop in Palestine was tied to two Gaza-based networks going offline on October 7. Fusion (AS42314) went down at 08:00 UTC and recovered some service just after 17:00 UTC the next day; that recovery was short-lived, as Fusion returned to an offline state after 12:00 UTC on October 9.
DCC North (AS203905) went offline around 10:00 UTC on October 7 and did not show any traffic recovery as of Monday, October 9. These failures are likely connected to electricity outages reported for the Gaza Strip.
Other Palestinian networks also ran at reduced capacity that Saturday. JETNET (AS199046) saw approximately half of its usual traffic after 08:00 UTC, and SpeedClick (AS57704) carried about 60% less than its normal volume. After 14:15 UTC on October 9, both saw a steep drop of about 95% — reducing them to residual traffic only.
Region-level data for Gaza shows similar reductions in HTTP requests starting a few hours after the attack. The Gaza Governorate saw traffic fall after 09:15 UTC on October 7; by 18:00 UTC on October 9, traffic was 46% below the previous week's mark. (Cloudflare notes pre-attack traffic spikes on Friday, October 6, but their cause is unclear.)
Deir al-Balah Governorate likewise sat 46% below normal at 18:00 UTC on October 9, while Khan Yunis was 50% lower.
Rafah Governorate followed a slightly slower timeline: traffic began dropping after 19:00 UTC on October 8 and by 18:00 UTC the next day was down 65% from the prior week. West Bank governorates did not show the same impact on Internet traffic.
Israeli traffic: mobile-heavy spikes
Israel's overall traffic surged to about 170% of the previous week's level shortly after 03:35 UTC, with a second rise later that day. Around 16:00 UTC (19:00 local time) it grew nearly 80% above the previous week's baseline. Mobile devices accounted for most of the jump in both cases.
HTTP request activity on Sunday, October 8, remained elevated compared to usual levels, showing noticeable peaks at roughly 06:00 UTC (09:00 local) and 12:00 UTC (15:00 local).
Mobile was also the driver behind the Saturday spikes: the daily mobile share of traffic hit its highest mark in two months, reaching 56%.
Traffic details at the level of individual Israeli districts tracked the nationwide profile.
Cyber attacks in parallel
While cyber attacks do not require a ground conflict, they frequently accompany one, as Cloudflare observed during the war in Ukraine. In Israel, DDoS attacks increased after October 7, centered on targets such as Israeli newspaper sites.
On October 8 one of those attacks peaked at 1.1 million requests per second at 02:00 UTC, reaching 1.26 billion blocked requests for the day. Another newspaper-related attack topped out at 745,000 requests per second around 06:00 that same day, with 346 million blocked requests on October 7 and 332 million on October 8.
Palestine was also the target of application layer DDoS attacks, though on a smaller scale. The largest in the last three months hit a Palestinian online newspaper on October 7, ringing in at 105 million daily requests. In per-second terms, that attack peaked at 214,000 requests per second at about 17:20 UTC on October 7.
