On Wednesday 13 September 2023 at 15:47 UTC, a UDP reflection (DNS) targeted a gaming community customer in the Benelux. The attack peaked at 98.3 Gbps and lasted 164 minutes. Traffic originated from 684 autonomous systems in 116 countries, predominantly compromised cloud VMs.
| Vector | UDP reflection (DNS) |
| Peak | 98.3 Gbps |
| Duration | 164 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.247 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.090% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.49% |
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 14 points of presence.
What the customer saw
Checkout conversion was unchanged compared with the same hour of the previous week.
Recommendations
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.