On Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 17:30 UTC, a Slowloris targeted a fashion retail customer in the Nordics. The attack peaked at 561.6 million requests per second and lasted 82 minutes. Traffic originated from 233 autonomous systems in 6 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | Slowloris |
| Peak | 561.6 million requests per second |
| Duration | 82 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.075 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.044% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.16% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a competitor’s product launch. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 713 within 26 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
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
Any plans to support per-tenant limits keyed on a JWT claim?
Great write-up. We saw almost the same pattern on our login endpoint last month.
Verified good bots and allow-listed partners bypass challenges entirely.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
Clear and practical, thanks.