On Friday 15 December 2023 at 07:46 UTC, a credential stuffing targeted a video streaming customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 896.3 million requests per second and lasted 92 minutes. Traffic originated from 2572 autonomous systems in 49 countries, predominantly misconfigured open reflectors.
| Vector | credential stuffing |
| Peak | 896.3 million requests per second |
| Duration | 92 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.431 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.089% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.47% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 864 within 5 seconds. The risk score of participating clients crossed the challenge threshold automatically and proof-of-work difficulty rose with origin load.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.