AI DDoS Attack Post-Mortem and Hardening Plan Playbook

An e-commerce company experienced a 6-hour DDoS attack during peak shopping season, resulting in $2.3M in lost revenue. The attack peaked at 840Gbps. CDN and WAF mitigations partially worked but failed after 90 minutes. The board wants a post-mortem and a hardening plan before the next peak season.

When to use this playbook

• Use this playbook when the decision looks like the situation above: An e-commerce company experienced a 6-hour DDoS attack during peak shopping season, resulting in $2.3M in lost revenue.
• It is a fit when you have source files in hand and need a structured, reviewable analysis — not a generic chat answer about "DDoS Attack Post-Mortem and Hardening Plan".
• Do not use it as a substitute for licensed, legal, clinical, or authorized official judgment in the domain.

What you'll need

• CDN and WAF traffic logs during the 6-hour attack window
• Origin server performance metrics during the attack
• Mitigation activation timeline (what was triggered, when, by whom)
• Vendor (CDN provider) post-incident report
• Revenue loss estimate by hour and product category

Attachments: Documents (Documents)

You are a cybersecurity architect conducting a DDoS post-mortem and building a hardening plan for an e-commerce company. I am attaching:

Work only from the attached source files. If a conclusion is not supported, say so.

Produce:
1. Reconstruct the attack: vector (volumetric, protocol, application layer), peak traffic profile, and geographic distribution of attack sources.
2. Identify the specific point at which CDN/WAF mitigation failed: what traffic patterns saturated the mitigation capacity?
3. Assess the origin server exposure: was it directly reachable once the CDN mitigation failed, and was the origin IP exposed?
4. Calculate the cost of the attack (direct revenue loss + incident response cost + reputational damage estimate) and the cost of prevention measures.
5. Build the hardening plan: specific controls, vendors, configurations, and the order of implementation to be ready before next peak season.

Call out where independent models are likely to disagree, and list follow-up documents a reviewer should request.

What to expect

• Attack vector and timeline reconstruction
• Mitigation failure point analysis
• Origin server exposure assessment
• Attack cost vs. prevention cost comparison
• Prioritized hardening plan with implementation timeline

Review before you act

• Validate this output against source files before relying on it: Reconstruct the attack: vector (volumetric, protocol, application layer), peak traffic profile, and geographic distribution of attack sources.
• Validate this output against source files before relying on it: Identify the specific point at which CDN/WAF mitigation failed: what traffic patterns saturated the mitigation capacity?.
• Validate this output against source files before relying on it: Assess the origin server exposure: was it directly reachable once the CDN mitigation failed, and was the origin IP exposed?.
• Validate this output against source files before relying on it: Calculate the cost of the attack (direct revenue loss + incident response cost + reputational damage estimate) and the cost of prevention measures.
• Confirm every cited figure, date, counterparty, or requirement against the attached originals — models compress and can drop a qualifier.
• Treat disagreement between models as a review item, especially on classification, materiality, and recommended next action.
• Do not authorize an operational, clinical, legal, credit, or enforcement action solely because the models agree.