On Sunday 1 January 2023 at 21:06 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a airline booking customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 308.9 Gbps and lasted 175 minutes. Traffic originated from 3852 autonomous systems in 75 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 308.9 Gbps |
| Duration | 175 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.330 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.049% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.32% |
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 40 points of presence.
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.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.