On Tuesday 29 March 2022 at 11:32 UTC, a cache-busting query flood targeted a online casino customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 943.9 million requests per second and lasted 182 minutes. Traffic originated from 2288 autonomous systems in 24 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | cache-busting query flood |
| Peak | 943.9 million requests per second |
| Duration | 182 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.893 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.006% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.62% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by an extortion email received two days earlier. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 267 within 19 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
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
Could you share the dataset behind the percentages?
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
Clear and practical, thanks.
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?