On Tuesday 6 February 2024 at 18:57 UTC, a UDP reflection (NTP) targeted a retail banking customer in Western Europe. The attack peaked at 388.2 Gbps and lasted 65 minutes. Traffic originated from 2014 autonomous systems in 89 countries, predominantly a rented booter service.
| Vector | UDP reflection (NTP) |
| Peak | 388.2 Gbps |
| Duration | 65 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.678 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.055% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.61% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by an extortion email received two days earlier. Edge packet filters identified the flood by source port and payload signature and dropped it at line rate across 27 points of presence.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 192 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Enable log streaming to your SIEM for faster correlation.
- Keep origin IPs out of public DNS history.
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.