On Friday 15 March 2024 at 06:48 UTC, a SYN flood targeted a fashion retail customer in North America. The attack peaked at 244.2 Gbps and lasted 93 minutes. Traffic originated from 3161 autonomous systems in 20 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | SYN flood |
| Peak | 244.2 Gbps |
| Duration | 93 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.863 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.045% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.12% |
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 20 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 157 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.