On Saturday 27 March 2021 at 04:18 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a sports betting customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 136.8 Gbps and lasted 12 minutes. Traffic originated from 2088 autonomous systems in 105 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 136.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 12 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.289 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.082% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.55% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 16 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 228 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.