On Saturday 30 March 2024 at 13:37 UTC, a HTTP POST flood targeted a fashion retail customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 300.4 million requests per second and lasted 86 minutes. Traffic originated from 3624 autonomous systems in 102 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | HTTP POST flood |
| Peak | 300.4 million requests per second |
| Duration | 86 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.921 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.028% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.53% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 755 within 26 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
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.