On Tuesday 27 September 2022 at 00:50 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a tax authority portal customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 383.8 Gbps and lasted 73 minutes. Traffic originated from 1748 autonomous systems in 29 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 383.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 73 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.404 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.007% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.27% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 26 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 90 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
This matches what we see in iGaming around big matches.
We had the exact false-positive issue with CGNAT carriers. The weighting change makes sense.
Good question. We will cover that in a follow-up post.
Carpet bombing is nasty. Good to see a clear explanation of it.
We had the exact false-positive issue with CGNAT carriers. The weighting change makes sense.