On Sunday 5 November 2023 at 17:17 UTC, a carpet-bombing UDP flood targeted a electronics retail customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 329.1 Gbps and lasted 166 minutes. Traffic originated from 3804 autonomous systems in 17 countries, predominantly hijacked home routers.
| Vector | carpet-bombing UDP flood |
| Peak | 329.1 Gbps |
| Duration | 166 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.358 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.001% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.60% |
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 25 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 31 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.