This article was published on February 28, 2020

Hackers send cryptocurrency exchange offline with DDoS attacks

OKEx and Bitfinex were hit by similar attacks in 24 hours


Hackers send cryptocurrency exchange offline with DDoS attacks

Someone is disrupting cryptocurrency exchanges with Distributed Denial of Service attacks, with both Bitfinex and OKEx hit in the past 24 hours.

I was not aware of the attack against OKEx yesterday. I’m interested to understand similarities,” tweeted Bitfinex CTO Paulo Ardoino. “We’ve seen a level of sophistication that means a deep preparation from the attacker.”

While OKEx remains largely unaffected beyond, trade on Bitfinex was suspended for around an hour, cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk reported. Both exchanges are currently online.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks aim to take services offline by flooding related servers with traffic. With DDoS attacks like the ones suffered by Bitfinex and OKEx, the traffic originates from a large number of machines, and commonly leverage botnets.

[READ: How GitHub braved the world’s largest DDoS attack]

There’s currently no tangible evidence pointing to exactly who’s responsible for the attacks, and no proof that the attacks are connected, although reportedly similar.

Apparently frustrated, OKEx CEO Jay Hao took to Twitter to offer “double pay” to anyone who participated in the attacks if they snitched.

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