Threat Bulletin 1418: UDP reflection (DNS) against a tax authority portal platform in Western Europe

On Thursday 30 July 2026 at 10:21 UTC, a UDP reflection (DNS) targeted a tax authority portal customer in Western Europe. The attack peaked at 80.3 Gbps and lasted 117 minutes. Traffic originated from 1160 autonomous systems in 72 countries, predominantly misconfigured open reflectors.

Vector UDP reflection (DNS)
Peak 80.3 Gbps
Duration 117 min
Time to mitigation 0.788 s
Attack traffic reaching origin 0.056%
Legitimate traffic challenged 0.66%

Timeline

The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 16 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.
  • Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.

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