On Saturday 14 February 2026 at 06:51 UTC, a cache-busting query flood targeted a online payments customer in the UK. The attack peaked at 529.2 million requests per second and lasted 140 minutes. Traffic originated from 1394 autonomous systems in 88 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | cache-busting query flood |
| Peak | 529.2 million requests per second |
| Duration | 140 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.929 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.019% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.44% |
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 42 within 21 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
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.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.