Threat Bulletin 1106: ACK flood against a sports betting platform in Iberia

On Thursday 22 May 2025 at 20:39 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a sports betting customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 91.0 Gbps and lasted 81 minutes. Traffic originated from 2934 autonomous systems in 39 countries, predominantly a Mirai-derived IoT botnet.

Vector ACK flood
Peak 91.0 Gbps
Duration 81 min
Time to mitigation 0.904 s
Attack traffic reaching origin 0.027%
Legitimate traffic challenged 0.62%

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 22 points of presence.

What the customer saw

The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.

Recommendations

  • Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
  • Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
  • Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.

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