On Thursday 26 December 2024 at 12:20 UTC, a HTTP POST flood targeted a education platform customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 399.1 million requests per second and lasted 29 minutes. Traffic originated from 3563 autonomous systems in 57 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | HTTP POST flood |
| Peak | 399.1 million requests per second |
| Duration | 29 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.397 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.043% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.71% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 330 within 40 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 206 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.