On Wednesday 8 June 2022 at 02:43 UTC, a GRE flood targeted a healthcare portal customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 123.7 Gbps and lasted 84 minutes. Traffic originated from 4000 autonomous systems in 14 countries, predominantly compromised cloud VMs.
| Vector | GRE flood |
| Peak | 123.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 84 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.749 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.055% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.29% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a competitor’s product launch. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 31 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
Clear and practical, thanks.