On Tuesday 7 May 2024 at 04:03 UTC, a HTTP POST flood targeted a retail banking customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 790.8 million requests per second and lasted 68 minutes. Traffic originated from 44 autonomous systems in 114 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | HTTP POST flood |
| Peak | 790.8 million requests per second |
| Duration | 68 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.634 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.028% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.02% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by an extortion email received two days earlier. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 755 within 8 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
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.