back to article DDOS strikes BitCoin exchange Mt.Gox

Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox has been attacked and its servers briefly taken offline. The service confirmed the attack at 2:00 AM Japan time on April 22nd, posting a tweet to warn users of the outage. UPDATE: This again appears to be another strong DDos attack. We are working hard to overcome it and will update... fb.me/14J8rINhm …

COMMENTS

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  1. Aldous
    Headmaster

    Verification queue is not transactions

    Come on el reg its right there in the title of the post you linked. Its the queue for a fully verified account (more deposit options etc) and nothing to do with the trading engine

  2. LarsG

    Not really news is it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      news

      Of course it is news. Yet another orchestrated attempt by the Establishment to nip in the bud this major threat to their own money printing. They will try and extinguish bitcoin whatever it takes, similarly gold which they naked shortsold to an unprecedented scale last week, to stem it's popularity. The "currency wars" are alive and kicking.

      1. ChrisM

        Re: news

        Wow, next thing you know 'the Man' will be making tinfoil so expensive you won't ba able to afford any to make your hats...

        Conspiracy theories always fall down when confronted by the plain reality that every extra person who knows a secret doubles the chance of someone blabbing...

        1. Great Bu

          Re: news

          Were you not paying attention ? It's a layer 7 attack ! LAYER 7 !!

          That's, like, 7 times worse than a regular layer 1 attack ! *

          *I'm not sure I fully understand the ins and outs of this........

          1. Roadkill

            @Great Bu

            The layer references are to the OSI Model. A layer 7 attack means the DDoS is interacting with their web application, rather than further down the protocol stack. For example, a typical DoS SYN flood is at layer 4 (transport) and is less sophisticated / potentially easier to filter.

            Relevant URL:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model#Description_of_OSI_layers

        2. Don Jefe
          Happy

          Re: news

          Actually the security risks for secrets rise in direct proportion to the total number of people the secret holder interacts with. In most cases that's far more than one person.

      2. PyLETS
        Meh

        On the scale of threats to $conventional

        BC is no more a threat to the conventional currency game than any other casino using their own chips at the tables. If you want a greater diversion of economic activity away from conventional currency have a look at the network money WirBank in Switzerland accounts. Doesn't create any problem for the authorities though either, SMEs in Switzerland which trade in CHW still have to pay taxes in conventional CHF.

  3. Khaptain Silver badge

    Soon to be known as

    The Madoff DDOS.

    I suppose it's one method of ensuring that price fluctuation continues thereby continuing to create interest for new "candidates".....

  4. Mayday
    Mushroom

    One would assume

    That a Bitcoin exchange would have far less resources (ie money - virtual or otherwise) to protect against this sort of activity than a "real" bank with a turnover in the vicinity of however many billions.

    1. Lost In Clouds of Data
      Facepalm

      Re: One would assume

      @Mayday: Not the lot I worked at. Security was always an afterthought and a massive inconvenience. It took two attacks by the Russian's before they decided otherwise, then, in the spirit of corporate lunacy that prevails, threw money and resources are what they perceived to be the problem, without actually asking us (the one's who'd identified the attack) what was needed.

      Year 1. Spend $10,000 on infrastructure

      Year 2: Spend $5,000. Get hacked

      Year 3: Spend $5,000 (it was, of course, a fluke)

      Year 4: Spend $1,000 on some auditing software (and only because I'd been bitching and moaning about needing it for several years). Get hacked again (discovered through aforesaid Auditing software)

      Year 5: Spend $500,000 and replace every last single solitary server we owned in a year long project. Yeah - knee-jerk time.

      Jerks...

  5. Crisp

    Is it really a DDOS?

    Or just another surge in demand?

    1. John Lilburne

      Re: Is it really a DDOS?

      There aren't that amount of idiots in the world.

      1. Irongut

        Re: Is it really a DDOS?

        You underestimate the global amount of stupid, the world's most renewable resource.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why do they bite the coins?

    I don't want a coin that's been in someone's mouth.

    1. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: Why do they bite the coins?

      Then you really don't want to think about where else some of your coins might have been. Haven't you ever heard of someone getting a 'toll booth'.

  7. PyLETS
    WTF?

    Qui bono ?

    Probably someone was BC short and wanted the price to fall.

    1. Anonymous IV
      Thumb Down

      Re: Qui bono ?

      If someone is going to quote a Latin tag then they should spell it correctly - here Cui bono...

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