On Sunday 1 October 2023 at 05:38 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a crypto exchange customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 164.6 Gbps and lasted 186 minutes. Traffic originated from 3606 autonomous systems in 7 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 164.6 Gbps |
| Duration | 186 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.773 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.038% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.49% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a hacktivist channel announcing the target. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 13 points of presence.
What the customer saw
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.