Binance cryptocurrency exchange went under attack this week. The CEO confirms, the network’s Chinese domains suffered the DDoS attacks. Furthermore, suspicions are that they were carried by the competitors.
One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges Binance suffered a series of DDoS attacks this Wednesday, April 29. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeted it’s Chinese domains and caused unexpected downtime.
DDoS attacks are cyber-attacks used to make a network unavailable by flooding it from many different sources. Because of the many attackers, it is extremely difficult to prevent such an attack, which is often coordinated using a botnet.
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The exchange experienced lags and interruption on network access, confirmed Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in his Twitter message. Furthermore, he reassured that systems are not damaged and all funds are safe.
Earlier today, our Chinese domains experienced targeted DDoS attacks, and users saw some lag and interruption of network access.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) April 29, 2020
Based on the attack pattern, it looks like work of our self-perceived competitors.
No need to be concerned. Systems are fine. Funds are #SAFU.
However, according to CZ, attacks were not accidental and intentionally organized by “self-perceived” competitors, based on the pattern of the attack. This suggests that the interventions could be ordered by the Binance exchange itself.
In response to Twitter user’s theory that Binance might be hiring hackers to find loopholes in its security system, CZ agreed that they “also have self-perceived “competitors” doing testing. Although such actions are a common practice at companies like Google and Facebook, it is not clear, however, if CZ was ironic or serious.
We of course do. We also have self-perceived “competitors” doing testing for us. Everyone is working on @Binance. https://t.co/hw6YKlRzVa
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) April 29, 2020
DDoS attacks on crypto exchanges become more frequent
The latest attack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance came nearly a year after the big one last May. The company then experienced a large scale data breach,when hackers stole more than $40 million in cryptocurrency. According to Binance, the theft impacted about 2% of its total Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
However, Binance’s competitors cryptocurrency exchanges suffered from DDoS attacks not so long ago. DailyCoin reported earlier that OKEx and Bitfinex exchanges were simultaneously attacked by DDoS, which caused both of them to go offline for a few hours.
Crypto exchange and derivatives trading platform BitMEX also went under DDoS attack during the mid-March cryptocurrency market crash, what caused even bigger liquidations and losses of funds.
