On Friday 5 September 2025 at 12:45 UTC, a WebSocket connection flood targeted a sports betting customer in Southeast Asia. The attack peaked at 197.6 million requests per second and lasted 80 minutes. Traffic originated from 941 autonomous systems in 57 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | WebSocket connection flood |
| Peak | 197.6 million requests per second |
| Duration | 80 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.366 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.074% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.73% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a hacktivist channel announcing the target. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 371 within 9 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 208 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
Great write-up. We saw almost the same pattern on our login endpoint last month.
Thanks! Yes — the risk score and its components are included in every log record.
Nice to read a vendor blog that admits what went wrong.
Interesting that most attacks are under ten minutes. Our experience is similar.
Carpet bombing is nasty. Good to see a clear explanation of it.
Verified good bots and allow-listed partners bypass challenges entirely.