On Monday 20 April 2026 at 14:02 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a B2B SaaS customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 144.0 Gbps and lasted 114 minutes. Traffic originated from 3230 autonomous systems in 59 countries, predominantly misconfigured open reflectors.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 144.0 Gbps |
| Duration | 114 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.472 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.064% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.14% |
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 25 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 118 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.