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Case Study: Duolingo blocks a 39-million-request DDoS attack in five seconds with Fastly

Duolingo Case StudySourced & dated by Case Study Desk
Key facts · TL;DR
Company
Duolingo
Industry
Education
Challenge
Securing 113M monthly learners
Headline result
39M-request DDoS blocked in 5 seconds

Key results

39M
Requests blocked in five seconds
DDoS attack
<1 week
To dent ongoing DDoS attacks

The challenge

Duolingo's 113 million monthly active learners rely on the app's availability, but frequent DDoS attacks consumed engineering hours - a single attack could spawn multiple issues - and threatened the customer experience.

The solution

Duolingo adopted Fastly's Next-Gen WAF and Response Security Service, backed by Fastly's security operations team, to build platform resilience and simplify security.

The first time we blocked a DDoS attack—39 million requests in five seconds—and no one noticed, at that moment I felt the organization accepting the trust.

MB
Matt Brandman
Senior Engineering Manager, Platform Security, Duolingo

The results, in context

Fastly made a real dent in Duolingo's DDoS attacks in less than a week. In one instance the team blocked a DDoS attack of 39 million requests in five seconds with no user-visible impact.

Products used

Fastly Fastly Next-Gen WAFFastly Response Security Service