Bitcoin Sites Become Hot Targets for DDoS Attacks
The massive surge in Bitcoin prices in recent months suddenly has made online cryptocurrency exchanges and services popular targets for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
This Monday, Bitfinex, one of the largest US dollar Bitcoin exchanges in the world, said it was the victim of a DDoS attack that knocked it offline for a short period of time. The company reported a similar incident just a few days earlier, and at least one other incident in June affected withdrawals and deposits of the then newly launched IOTA cryptocurrency.
In a report released Tuesday, security vendor Imperva said that nearly three in four of the 27 enterprise Bitcoin sites that are using the company's services were hit with DDoS attacks in the last quarter. From being hardly a blip on the radar of most cybercriminals earlier this year, the Bitcoin industry emerged as one of the top 10 most-targeted industries for denial-of-service campaigns in the third quarter of 2017.
