UPDATED 23:12 EDT / JUNE 14 2017

EMERGING TECH

Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex targeted in DDoS attack amid cryptocurrency bull market

Leading bitcoin exchange Bitfinex advised customers that they were being targeted by a distributed denial of service attack Wednesday following a similar attack the day before.

The attack, which involves a company’s servers being flooded with data in an attempt to take its services offline, did not affect bitcoin and Ethereum trading. “Most users will be able to use the platform normally though,” the company said on its status page. “You may be alerted by a notification from Cloudflare, our DDoS protection service provider that helps fend off the attack.”

Even so, Bitfinex’s IOTA trading platform was partially disabled, with users unable to make deposits or withdrawals. It wasn’t clear whether that was the result of the DDoS attack. Coin Telegraph claims that the IOTA token exchange downtime may stem from an unexpectedly high volume of trades following its launch Tuesday.

Bitfinex isn’t the only bitcoin exchange to be targeted with DDoS attacks this week, with Chinese exchange BTC-E saying Monday that it was also undergoing an attack. According to CNBC, the attack brought down the company’s site briefly, but mitigation efforts restored the platform, with all trades being processed by Wednesday. The U.S. venture capital-funded exchange Coinbase Inc. suffered downtime in late May, although this was attributed at the time to unprecedented trading volumes.

The attacks follow a softening in the overall market following the price, in U.S. dollars, breaking through $3,000 for the first time as of last weekend. Since hitting a peak of $3,017.78, the price has plunged approximately 16 percent to sit at $2534.18.

Image: Pixabay

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