Bitcoin Forum

Over the course of 12 hours on May 9, the Poloniex digital asset exchange was intermittently inaccessible to users, causing quite a stir for traders and the greater community. According to their official Twitter account, the cause was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the exchange, preventing users from logging on or making any trades. Exacerbating the issue was the fact that as the attacks occurred, a majority of the exchange’s assets fell dramatically, some taking overwhelming losses of up to 45 percent.
http://news.8btc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/polo.jpg




http://news.8btc.com/poloniex-goes-down-users-lose-big

You cannot blame Bitcoin for this... right. If you use these centralized services, you are more vulnerable to attacks. We had the same problem

with MtGox... People blame Bitcoin for their losses, but they made the decision to use these services. I also use these services.. but I never store

large amounts of bitcoins on these services. I keep it on a hardware wallet.. and when I see a bubble forming... I quickly transfer some coins to

the exchange... wait a few hours and sell for a profit. I then transfer the money or the remaining bitcoins out of those services.  ;)

A DDOS service is irritating, but not as devastating as a hacker attack. If Poloniex loses its funds like Mt Gox did, it could take down half of the crypto world with it. It has by far the largest volumes of crypto trades taking place.

DDoS attacks are mostly fired on an exchange to cause the market(s) to react by panic selling, as not accessible exchanges are a sensitive subject nowadays. Don't forget that big money is involved in the crypto market. If they rent/buy a DDoS attack for a certain amount of hours, the results for the people behind it may be more than rewarding. It's definitely worth a shot.

This is not a news :D  Poloniex is already known for having this kind of problem whenever trading activities heats up.  Worst it goes up when trading is already over making users lose a huge amount of money.  I wonder if it is really the connection problem or an inside job to reap all the profit once coins are hyped.

I also noticed that Poloniex has been targeted lately by DDoS attacked. It's not bitcoin fault, we all know that, but at least Poloniex should have anticipated this kind of attacked since there is money, big amounts of money involved and they need to safeguard peoples asset.

Wondering also we is behind this attacked on them lately? Are there groups that want Poloniex to be taken down? Who will benefit such attacked on a trading platform and cause panic to investors or traders?

Poloniex didn't have a good reputation years ago.

Its yet-another-clowncar-exchange that is held together with baling wire and chewing gum. It isn't designed for any kind of volume. It isn't surprising that it falls over after people hammer the site. What I find funny is that the DDoS they are describing could simply be all their users demanding page refreshes, not some nefarious hacker.

Until they upgrade their infrastructure and potentially rewrite their matching engine, I wouldn't touch them with a 100 meter pole.

"Its yet-another-clowncar-exchange that is held together with baling wire and chewing gum..."
That sounds familiar, will be right back:  :P


"The Internet from every angle has always been a house of cards held together with defective duct tape. It’s a miracle that anything works at all...."

The Internet Is Held Together With Bubble Gum And Baling Wire
https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-together-with-bubble-gum-and-baling-wire/

In most cases that's indeed the main cause of an exchange with poor capacity to go down temporarily. I have been (still am) experiencing this with BTC-E from the first day of me using that exchange in early 2013. Till this day they haven't been able (whatever the reason might be) to offer people a properly working platform at peak traffic moments. In case exchanges really suffer from a ddos attack, they mostly throw out a public notification stating exactly that.