Bitfinex, the fourth largest cryptocurrency exchange, is back in business after shutting down for a few hours earlier today due to a cyber attack.
Business was temporarily shut down on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange earlier today due to a cyber attack. Fortunately, the outage did not last that long, roughly a couple of hours.
Bitfinex is currently under extreme load. We are investigating the issue and will keep you all up to date as we learn more.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
Temporary Closure
The cryptocurrency exchange was put under a heavy load due to a DDoS attack at about 13:39 UTC today. The exchange posted information concerning the ongoing situation, stating:
The cause of the outage has been identified. A DDoS attack was launched soon after we restarted operations. The previous outage was caused by issues with one of our infrastructure providers. While the platform was recovering, the attack caused extreme load on the servers.
We are adjusting the DDoS protection measures to fend off the attack and be able to relaunch.
By 15:02 UTC, Bitfinex began to return to normal operations, albeit with a wary eye out for further trouble. The exchange then posted that the platform was fully back to normal operation at 16:42 UTC.
Continuing Cyber Attacks
It does seem that cyber attacks and hacking continue unabated in the cryptocurrency sphere. January saw the hack of Coincheck, resulting in roughly $530 million of the XEM cryptocurrency being stolen. South Korea’s intelligence agency believes that North Korea was behind the Coincheck hack.
As for Bitfinex, they’ve had some other issues recently too. The exchange was dropped by Wells Fargo back in 2017, and rumors have said that they are now working with Noble Bank International, which is based in Puerto Rico.
On the cryptocurrency front, the exchange recently said it will not list the Petro, the cryptocurrency created by Venezuela in order to skirt US-led economic sanctions. Of course, the exchange is very busy right now with EOS, which is seeing a lot of trading action. More EOS has been traded in the last 24 hours on Bitfinex than Bitcoin.
Images courtesy of Twitter/@bitfinex and Shutterstock.