On Thursday 15 August 2024 at 15:15 UTC, a UDP reflection (DNS) targeted a online casino customer in Central Europe. The attack peaked at 122.3 Gbps and lasted 90 minutes. Traffic originated from 1721 autonomous systems in 71 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | UDP reflection (DNS) |
| Peak | 122.3 Gbps |
| Duration | 90 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.201 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.032% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.29% |
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 23 points of presence.
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.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
Would love a follow-up on how you handle HTTP/3 fingerprinting.
How does the proof-of-work challenge behave on older Android devices? Any numbers below Android 10?
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?