Two prime cryptocurrency exchanges have reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults on their methods within the final 24 hours.
OKEx, which says it’s based mostly in Malta, has apparently suffered two assaults, one Thursday and one at present, based on its CEO, Jay Hao. On his Weibo account Friday, Hao stated the primary assault was of a 200 gigabyte severity, however the second had doubled to 400 GB.
Regardless of the assaults, the alternate’s service is “largely unaffected,” he stated. OKEx’s Twitter account has no warnings of interruptions this morning, aside from a short interlude for a systems upgrade for its futures and choices buying and selling facility.
Apparently extra severely affected is Bitfinex, which reported a suspected DDoS assault on Twitter Friday morning (UTC time).
The Hong Kong-headquartered platform’s buying and selling providers have been offline for a interval of underneath an hour, however at press time Bitfinex says providers are again to regular.
“Right now we have been topic to a really subtle DDoS assault,” tweeted Bitfinex CTO Paulo Ardoino after the occasion. “All the @bitfinex group labored actually onerous to fully annihilate it in a brief time frame. All funds remained secure throughout the entire assault and high-trading-performance is now absolutely re-established.”
A DDoS assault makes an attempt to overwhelm the internet hosting servers of a web-based service, utilizing a flood of faux visitors from a number of computer systems to disrupt regular exercise. A extreme assault can take a service offline, or could trigger gradual responses for web site customers.
It isn’t clear why two main exchanges have been focused on this means at roughly the identical time, or what the attackers hope to realize.
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