On the back of its recent surge, a virtual currency used in some online casinos and other e-commerce industries, Bitcoin, experienced a major Distributed Denial of Services attack on the website.
Bitcoin is currently fighting the attack which it believes is motivated by a desire to manipulate the price of its soaring virtual currency. Furthermore, it has been stated by one of the main Bitcoin online exchanges, the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, that the attacks have caused its worst trading lags ever and presented error pages to traders.
According to Mt. Gox marketer Gonzague Gay-Bouchery, the price surge, which saw Bitcoin achieve highs of US$142 per coin on April 4, has caused malicious opportunists to try and game the system. It is believed that the attackers waited until Bitcoin's price hits a high, sold their Bitcoins and then started a DDoS attack that destabilizes the exchange, hoping that Bitcoin holders will panic and sell, causing the price to drop and creating a great buying opportunity for the attackers.
However, it seems that Bitcoin is putting up quite a fight, with the help of Florida-based specialist Prolexic. Still, at this point Gay-Bouchery isn’t sure when the attacks would subside, but he still called on Bitcoin traders not to panic or invest more money than they're willing to lose.
He also urged the traders to use Mt. Gox's options for two-factor authentication in order to prevent their accounts from being hacked.
Regarding his company’s plans and initiatives, Gay-Bouchery said that Mt. Gox is currently involved in a major technical overhaul of its exchange, adding that the testing should be complete and the new systems fully operational by the end of 2013. He revealed that the trading platform will be separated from the front-end website, which will make it immune from the problems like the ones it’s been going through these days.
