Bitcoin Forum

I noticed Mt Gox is off line. An hour or so ago it was responding very sluggishly and at one point it returned an error message saying it was under a ddos attack. Anybody knows more about this?

i just know i can't access it

He's working on it right now.

No error comes up for me.  It just doesn't load.

IDK where mtgox is located, but with a community like our's I can see where it would be hard to figure out a time to do any server maintenance.  People from all over the world are here so there's no standard timezone.

  - http://support.mtgox.com/entries/20192703-ddos-in-progress-2011-06-14

obviously Magictux is skilled, but I have to question;  is he skilled enough to withstand an entire world of hackers attacking the exchange that handles 90% of btc market?
The attacks I'm sure are constant.   Alot of faith in anonymous people goes with owning BTC!

makes you wonder who would be behind such attacks as I doubt the usual perpetrators of ddos such as anonymous have anything against bitcoin.

In fact dont they take their donations in bitcoin.
Feds maybe? or will I get my tinfoil hat ;D

Just when people were about to trade again

This is PRECISELY one of the reasons it is so important for bitcoin that we diversify, USE OTHER EXCHANGERS! not that i think this is anything more than a ddos, but if mtgox is destroyed by hackers/government/whoever, then somewhere around 100m bitcoin could be lost, there is always the backdoor chance that mtgox is offered some large sum of money to push the 'delete' button. how many people here would fly to japan to look for some guy who they don't know who probably left the country, and if you find him, what then? tell im he's nothing but a big jerk? DIVERSIFY people, our biggest exchange should be WAY below 50% of the market, not hovering around 90%. You all look like the same gathering sheep you call the fiaters. I'm not promoting a specific alternative exchange, i am supporting many many many alternatives. Think people, please, for the love of bitcoin! Just THINK! reason it out, don't take my word for it, weigh the reasons and make a choice, don't just see a crowd and do as they do. THINK! what are your reasons for using gox? and what are reasons not to use mt gox?

i dont think this is a ddos attack, i think its just people hitting refresh

more people need to use a service like http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ticker/

Is it reasonable to suspect that this is simply too much traffic/interest in the site, and not an attack?

maybe make your own exchange if you're going to complain

i don't have the skill to do so, so i'm not going to complain about the lack of viable alternatives.

btw it's funny or maybe frightening to see all the other existing exchanges grinding to a halt as soon as Gox is offline ...

http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/

This is what I am getting bakc now.
Loadavg too high due to ddos, please retry in ~5 min

So it does indeed seem to be a ddos attack

It's certainly reason for concern if that's what it really is. If even Mastercard and Visa can't withstand such attacks, then I doubt something like Mt. Gox is going to, and the greater the potential damage, the more people seem drawn to attacks like this. I wonder if this is going to make people worried enough to abandon the currency if it continues and there are no alternatives.

A theory I have is that, since all of the hubub from last weekend (and the thursday/friday leading up to it) that many people may have finally had their transactions cleared this morning.

I had money going into bank > dwolla > gox that started on thursday and didn't clear until yesterday.  Friday+over the weekend may have cleared this morning.

Good point. Maybe I will, but in the meantime i will continue to use other exchanges available, instead of huddling around one site.

I love how just as I go to the site to confirm this (and it turns out to be down)...

I return to THIS site... and find it down too....

Same for InstaWallet.

My, things are getting interesting.

Seems like to me some of it's still down.  I can't connect to the https://mtgox.com/code/data/getDepth.php file with my ticker script.  Although I can see the file if I connect directly to it.

I'm sure he has hired a full staff

With the deep bit situation, the motivation of the 'hackers' seems to be to stimulate the abandonment of deep bit to spread out the mining rate.

An attack on MTGOX could be along similar lines...attempting to force people to use other exchanges.

But has it even been confirmed that it was a ddos or could it just be some growing pains?

On mtgox support forums (just added  :)), they have stated that it's a ddos.

Something fishy is going on with MTgox and all other bitcoin exchanges. I have a pretty good feeling MTgox will liquidate very soon.

ya, im pretty sure the attacks are coming from someone who loves bitcoin and understands(sadly unlike most) that diversification is very important. I for one would love to see people realize just how dangerous such a massive amount of trust in single entities is. unfortunately alot of people still feel very comfortable playing the whole 'monkey see monkey do' game, luckily that is one of the things bitcoin has come to change. 

I had the same problem...I see in the responses that they seem to be using an anti-DDOS service called blacklotus.net.  I'm guessing the fact that I was polling on a regular interval (1 min), I was flagged as being DDOS like traffic.  From the same machine I can connect from a browser with no problem.  I've emailed them about it (I'm imagine I could craft the headers to mimic the browser and work around it...and maybe randomize the interval of the request to avoid getting flagged again, but I'm hoping mtgox might have a better suggestion for me).