On Friday 27 August 2021 at 16:39 UTC, a carpet-bombing UDP flood targeted a gaming community customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 359.2 Gbps and lasted 97 minutes. Traffic originated from 2848 autonomous systems in 21 countries, predominantly a Mirai-derived IoT botnet.
| Vector | carpet-bombing UDP flood |
| Peak | 359.2 Gbps |
| Duration | 97 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.189 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.003% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.14% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a publicly announced sales event. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 20 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 46 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
Solid runbook advice. The DNS-at-2am point hit home.
Clear and practical, thanks.
This matches what we see in iGaming around big matches.
Is the risk score exposed in the logs so we can build our own dashboards on it?
Would love a follow-up on how you handle HTTP/3 fingerprinting.
Interesting that most attacks are under ten minutes. Our experience is similar.
Interesting that most attacks are under ten minutes. Our experience is similar.
The billing model is what got our finance team on board, honestly.
Would love a follow-up on how you handle HTTP/3 fingerprinting.
Thanks! Yes — the risk score and its components are included in every log record.