On Saturday 19 September 2026 at 10:25 UTC, a cache-busting query flood targeted a airline booking customer in Western Europe. The attack peaked at 33.7 million requests per second and lasted 30 minutes. Traffic originated from 545 autonomous systems in 28 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | cache-busting query flood |
| Peak | 33.7 million requests per second |
| Duration | 30 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.194 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.058% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.45% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 370 within 8 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 84 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
How does the proof-of-work challenge behave on older Android devices? Any numbers below Android 10?
Any plans to support per-tenant limits keyed on a JWT claim?
How does the proof-of-work challenge behave on older Android devices? Any numbers below Android 10?