On Tuesday 9 May 2023 at 11:56 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a tax authority portal customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 386.1 Gbps and lasted 146 minutes. Traffic originated from 3503 autonomous systems in 43 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 386.1 Gbps |
| Duration | 146 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.730 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.077% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.13% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 20 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 46 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.