On Thursday 16 February 2023 at 05:59 UTC, a CLDAP reflection targeted a fashion retail customer in Iberia. The attack peaked at 291.5 Gbps and lasted 153 minutes. Traffic originated from 4145 autonomous systems in 70 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | CLDAP reflection |
| Peak | 291.5 Gbps |
| Duration | 153 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.009 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.075% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.78% |
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 31 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 62 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.