On Thursday 16 January 2025 at 20:44 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a education platform customer in the UK. The attack peaked at 62.8 Gbps and lasted 121 minutes. Traffic originated from 3332 autonomous systems in 27 countries, predominantly hijacked home routers.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 62.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 121 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.768 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.054% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.26% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 12 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?
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