Threat Bulletin 0335: ACK flood against a electronics retail platform in Iberia

On Monday 6 June 2022 at 16:28 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a electronics retail customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 70.4 Gbps and lasted 115 minutes. Traffic originated from 2585 autonomous systems in 42 countries, predominantly compromised cloud VMs.

Vector ACK flood
Peak 70.4 Gbps
Duration 115 min
Time to mitigation 0.232 s
Attack traffic reaching origin 0.072%
Legitimate traffic challenged 0.01%

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 35 points of presence.

What the customer saw

Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.

Recommendations

  • Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
  • Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
  • Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top