On Wednesday 28 April 2021 at 08:48 UTC, a search endpoint flood targeted a video streaming customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 722.0 million requests per second and lasted 182 minutes. Traffic originated from 2701 autonomous systems in 44 countries, predominantly a Mirai-derived IoT botnet.
| Vector | search endpoint flood |
| Peak | 722.0 million requests per second |
| Duration | 182 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.726 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.035% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.10% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 492 within 29 seconds. The risk score of participating clients crossed the challenge threshold automatically and proof-of-work difficulty rose with origin load.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 143 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.