On Friday 9 September 2022 at 09:01 UTC, a SYN flood targeted a education platform customer in the UK. The attack peaked at 4.7 Gbps and lasted 135 minutes. Traffic originated from 1908 autonomous systems in 55 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | SYN flood |
| Peak | 4.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 135 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.342 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.057% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.10% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by an extortion email received two days earlier. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 25 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?