On Saturday 21 January 2023 at 13:18 UTC, a UDP reflection (DNS) targeted a online casino customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 356.8 Gbps and lasted 87 minutes. Traffic originated from 498 autonomous systems in 96 countries, predominantly hijacked home routers.
| Vector | UDP reflection (DNS) |
| Peak | 356.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 87 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.510 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.086% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.07% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 34 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 179 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.