On Monday 12 June 2023 at 18:52 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a developer platform customer in Central Europe. The attack peaked at 104.7 Gbps and lasted 60 minutes. Traffic originated from 3955 autonomous systems in 78 countries, predominantly mobile carrier ranges.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 104.7 Gbps |
| Duration | 60 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.795 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.033% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.53% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a competitor’s product launch. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 19 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 58 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.