On Thursday 24 March 2022 at 08:33 UTC, a CLDAP reflection targeted a electronics retail customer in North America. The attack peaked at 44.4 Gbps and lasted 37 minutes. Traffic originated from 1492 autonomous systems in 34 countries, predominantly compromised cloud VMs.
| Vector | CLDAP reflection |
| Peak | 44.4 Gbps |
| Duration | 37 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.168 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.085% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.75% |
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 31 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.