On Sunday 4 August 2024 at 21:18 UTC, a CLDAP reflection targeted a crypto exchange customer in North America. The attack peaked at 319.7 Gbps and lasted 176 minutes. Traffic originated from 3433 autonomous systems in 85 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | CLDAP reflection |
| Peak | 319.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 176 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.633 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.082% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.43% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a competitor’s product launch. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 32 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 57 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.