Threat Bulletin 1001: Slowloris against a ticketing platform in Iberia

On Sunday 29 December 2024 at 17:44 UTC, a Slowloris targeted a ticketing customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 268.5 million requests per second and lasted 189 minutes. Traffic originated from 3419 autonomous systems in 71 countries, predominantly misconfigured open reflectors.

Timeline

The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 858 within 31 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

A brief increase in p99 latency of 38 ms during the first minute, then normal service.

Recommendations

• Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
• Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
• Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.