On Thursday 30 March 2023 at 17:11 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a online casino customer in North America. The attack peaked at 112.6 Gbps and lasted 177 minutes. Traffic originated from 468 autonomous systems in 25 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | ACK flood |
| Peak | 112.6 Gbps |
| Duration | 177 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.902 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.038% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.28% |
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 25 points of presence.
What the customer saw
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.