On Thursday 10 March 2022 at 13:24 UTC, a carpet-bombing UDP flood targeted a online payments customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 112.8 Gbps and lasted 124 minutes. Traffic originated from 2363 autonomous systems in 107 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | carpet-bombing UDP flood |
| Peak | 112.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 124 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.564 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.006% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.33% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a hacktivist channel announcing the target. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 37 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.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.
Verified good bots and allow-listed partners bypass challenges entirely.