On Monday 18 November 2024 at 02:21 UTC, a cache-busting query flood targeted a online payments customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 154.9 million requests per second and lasted 176 minutes. Traffic originated from 4161 autonomous systems in 51 countries, predominantly a Mirai-derived IoT botnet.
| Vector | cache-busting query flood |
| Peak | 154.9 million requests per second |
| Duration | 176 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.139 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.016% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.72% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 499 within 31 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
A brief increase in p99 latency of 212 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.