Threat Bulletin 1171: search endpoint flood against a developer platform platform in the Middle East

On Thursday 21 August 2025 at 01:36 UTC, a search endpoint flood targeted a developer platform customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 727.2 million requests per second and lasted 97 minutes. Traffic originated from 2780 autonomous systems in 36 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.

Vector search endpoint flood
Peak 727.2 million requests per second
Duration 97 min
Time to mitigation 0.208 s
Attack traffic reaching origin 0.033%
Legitimate traffic challenged 0.04%

Timeline

The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 551 within 37 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 39 ms during the first minute, then normal service.

Recommendations

  • Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
  • Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
  • Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.

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