On Tuesday 15 October 2024 at 05:56 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a electronics retail customer in Central Europe. The attack peaked at 246.8 Gbps and lasted 90 minutes. Traffic originated from 2015 autonomous systems in 92 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 246.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 90 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.527 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.068% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.15% |
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 23 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 log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
The billing model is what got our finance team on board, honestly.
The billing model is what got our finance team on board, honestly.
Is the risk score exposed in the logs so we can build our own dashboards on it?
Would love a follow-up on how you handle HTTP/3 fingerprinting.
Clear and practical, thanks.
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?
Do you publish the edge IP ranges in a machine-readable format?
Verified good bots and allow-listed partners bypass challenges entirely.
Is the risk score exposed in the logs so we can build our own dashboards on it?
Clear and practical, thanks.