On Tuesday 4 January 2022 at 03:32 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a developer platform customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 285.8 Gbps and lasted 66 minutes. Traffic originated from 60 autonomous systems in 102 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | ACK flood |
| Peak | 285.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 66 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.084 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.078% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.20% |
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 15 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.