On Saturday 26 August 2023 at 18:40 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a education platform customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 91.4 Gbps and lasted 69 minutes. Traffic originated from 2044 autonomous systems in 105 countries, predominantly a Mirai-derived IoT botnet.
| Vector | ACK flood |
| Peak | 91.4 Gbps |
| Duration | 69 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.906 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.083% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.32% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a publicly announced sales event. 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 77 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.