On Sunday 12 January 2025 at 11:18 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a healthcare portal customer in Southeast Asia. The attack peaked at 318.5 Gbps and lasted 82 minutes. Traffic originated from 408 autonomous systems in 103 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 318.5 Gbps |
| Duration | 82 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.315 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.052% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.11% |
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 39 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 108 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.