On Friday 14 January 2022 at 00:14 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a gaming community customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 142.0 Gbps and lasted 164 minutes. Traffic originated from 2390 autonomous systems in 67 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 142.0 Gbps |
| Duration | 164 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.585 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.002% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.28% |
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 22 points of presence.
What the customer saw
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.