On Sunday 10 November 2024 at 13:43 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a online casino customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 297.2 Gbps and lasted 97 minutes. Traffic originated from 3543 autonomous systems in 42 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | ACK flood |
| Peak | 297.2 Gbps |
| Duration | 97 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.297 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.028% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.72% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by an extortion email received two days earlier. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 31 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
The billing model is what got our finance team on board, honestly.
Thanks! Yes — the risk score and its components are included in every log record.
Nice to read a vendor blog that admits what went wrong.