On Friday 14 October 2022 at 02:08 UTC, a Slowloris targeted a video streaming customer in the Middle East. The attack peaked at 319.3 million requests per second and lasted 122 minutes. Traffic originated from 1288 autonomous systems in 24 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | Slowloris |
| Peak | 319.3 million requests per second |
| Duration | 122 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.110 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.087% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.47% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a ransom note demanding payment in Monero. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 531 within 18 seconds. The risk score of participating clients crossed the challenge threshold automatically and proof-of-work difficulty rose with origin load.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
Interesting that most attacks are under ten minutes. Our experience is similar.
Is the risk score exposed in the logs so we can build our own dashboards on it?
Is the risk score exposed in the logs so we can build our own dashboards on it?