On Sunday 12 October 2025 at 23:15 UTC, a SYN flood targeted a electronics retail customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 203.8 Gbps and lasted 133 minutes. Traffic originated from 1292 autonomous systems in 72 countries, predominantly hijacked home routers.
| Vector | SYN flood |
| Peak | 203.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 133 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.463 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.020% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.13% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a breaking political story. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 25 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 232 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.