On Monday 1 May 2023 at 18:00 UTC, a ACK flood targeted a fashion retail customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 72.8 Gbps and lasted 115 minutes. Traffic originated from 2456 autonomous systems in 80 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | ACK flood |
| Peak | 72.8 Gbps |
| Duration | 115 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.902 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.001% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.04% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a hacktivist channel announcing the target. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 15 points of presence.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.