On Friday 25 October 2024 at 01:56 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a online casino customer in Western Europe. The attack peaked at 338.7 Gbps and lasted 66 minutes. Traffic originated from 1698 autonomous systems in 77 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 338.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 66 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.924 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.023% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.38% |
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 31 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.