On Wednesday 7 August 2024 at 12:34 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a crypto exchange customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 19.2 Gbps and lasted 134 minutes. Traffic originated from 468 autonomous systems in 73 countries, predominantly hijacked home routers.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 19.2 Gbps |
| Duration | 134 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.190 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.044% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.29% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a competitor’s product launch. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 40 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 149 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.