On Saturday 17 December 2022 at 18:16 UTC, a memcached amplification targeted a crypto exchange customer in North America. The attack peaked at 259.1 Gbps and lasted 179 minutes. Traffic originated from 2328 autonomous systems in 11 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | memcached amplification |
| Peak | 259.1 Gbps |
| Duration | 179 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.646 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.051% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.68% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a publicly announced sales event. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 12 points of presence.
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.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.