On Saturday 22 March 2025 at 05:33 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a news publisher customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 271.7 Gbps and lasted 162 minutes. Traffic originated from 3916 autonomous systems in 111 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 271.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 162 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.718 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.070% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.46% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 27 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
Our auditors asked for exactly this kind of incident evidence under DORA.
How do you avoid challenging uptime monitors and partners?
The billing model is what got our finance team on board, honestly.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
This matches what we see in iGaming around big matches.
This matches what we see in iGaming around big matches.
Clear and practical, thanks.
Clear and practical, thanks.
Thanks — sharing this with our on-call team.
Great to hear, thanks for sharing your experience.