On Thursday 11 January 2024 at 07:26 UTC, a HTTP POST flood targeted a electronics retail customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 429.8 million requests per second and lasted 8 minutes. Traffic originated from 1372 autonomous systems in 17 countries, predominantly residential proxy networks.
| Vector | HTTP POST flood |
| Peak | 429.8 million requests per second |
| Duration | 8 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.204 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.015% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.41% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by a hacktivist channel announcing the target. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 203 within 5 seconds. The risk score of participating clients crossed the challenge threshold automatically and proof-of-work difficulty rose with origin load.
What the customer saw
The customer’s status page stayed green throughout; they learned about the attack from our notification.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.
- Add a dedicated rate limit for the targeted route.
The point about origin IPs leaking through certificate transparency logs is underrated.