Cyber attacks and website downtimes are very regular events for cryptocurrency related service. One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex, suffered a cyber attack on Tuesday morning, 5th June. Bitfinex used Twitter to provide updates for their users. The first tweet read as following:
Trading and funding is currently paused whilst we undergo unplanned maintenance. All features likely to resume shortly. Apologies for the inconvenience.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
This “unplanned maintenance” took only about one hour and was followed by a quick update shortly later. The cryptocurrency exchange was active and fully operational once again.
We're live! Apologies for the downtime – happy trading.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
In an email, Marketing head Kasper Rasmussen admitted that the exchange had been targeted by a DDoS attack. For this reason, Bitfinex was offline for an hour. However, due to its nature, the DDoS attack didn’t harm user accounts or their associated funds. Only actiive trading operations were at risk during the time of the attack. As soon as the news broke, the price of Bitcoin fell by approximately 2 percent.
Background of the attack
Bitfinex on its official statuspage described the background of the attack, the outage was due to “one of our infrastructure providers.” However, the incident report also claims, that during the recovery time “the attack caused extreme load on the servers.”
Bitfinex is currently under extreme load. We are investigating the issue and will keep you all up to date as we learn more.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
Also, Bitfinex announced they are “monitoring the situation closely” to encourage users not to fear about their funds. It is not the first time that Bitfinex suffers from an outage. Back in 2016, the exchange was hacked. The loss back then was a breathtaking 120,000 Bitcoin, approximately worth $68 Million at the time.
Bitfinex is not the only exchange struggling with DDoS attacls, the infamous cryptocurrency exchange Mt.Gox is also witnessed a DDoS attack shortly before the hack in 2013 and its closure following it shortly after. Another major cryptocurrency exchange, Coincheck has seen the biggest cryptocurrency related theft, when $500 Million worth of NEM were stolen from its wallets.
Further, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit lost a staggering 17 percent of its digital assets in a similar incident. Bitfinex took to Twitter and informed its customers about the condition on the exchange being back to normal. The tweet confirmed, “users can trade and fund on Bitfinex once again.”
Trading and funding is live once again. Thank you for your patience.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
Featured Image via BigStock.