On Sunday 29 September 2024 at 20:23 UTC, a carpet-bombing UDP flood targeted a ticketing customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 167.0 Gbps and lasted 127 minutes. Traffic originated from 1975 autonomous systems in 72 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | carpet-bombing UDP flood |
| Peak | 167.0 Gbps |
| Duration | 127 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.496 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.087% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.13% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 27 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
Any plans to support per-tenant limits keyed on a JWT claim?
How does the proof-of-work challenge behave on older Android devices? Any numbers below Android 10?