Attack?

[jake262144]

Half an hour ago, this was happening:





What alerted me most was the fact that the forums were down.
Has there been some attack?

Is Bitcoinwatch broken - which I really hope it is - showing VERY low block generation per hour?

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[Jack of Diamonds]

There is every reason to suspect another exchange is trying to poach members from mtgox. Just got this pishing email:

Date: Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 10:44 AM
Subject: [Mt.Gox] Your account is currently pending review.
To: -


Dear Mt.Gox user,

Your account is currently pending review, please visit
https://mtgox.com/forms/verification
For those users who have had their accounts marked for review, an
explanation of why were are implementing these security measures can be
found here:

Security Measures
Explained

“Verified” Accounts are eligible for monthly/daily transaction limits of up
to 5 times the monthly limit and 10 times the daily limit.

In order to apply for the “Verified” account status please attach a copy of
the following documents:
- Your government issued photo ID (passport, permanent residence card or
driver’s license) and
- A scan of either your monthly utility bill (power, phone, TV, gas, water,
etc.) or a certificate of residency issued by your local government.

Thanks,
The Mt.Gox team

Return email address doesn't go to a scammer, it goes directly to info@mtgox.com (not spoofed), so no motive of stealing personal information

Email info of users is from the earlier leak of emails last year.
They are trying to make it look like Mt. Gox is unreliable, under government surveillance/pressured by officials to gain personal information from it's clients.

Combine with a simultaneous DDoS & it's obvious a competitor is attempting to drive traffic to their site this way, too big of a coincidence.

A pretty basic and primitive strategy, if you ask me.
Also Mt. Gox is up now.

[repentance]

There is every reason to suspect another exchange is trying to poach members from mtgox. Just got this pishing email:

Date: Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 10:44 AM
Subject: [Mt.Gox] Your account is currently pending review.
To: -


Dear Mt.Gox user,

Your account is currently pending review, please visit
https://mtgox.com/forms/verification<http://www.mtgmx.tk/forms/verification&gt;
For those users who have had their accounts marked for review, an
explanation of why were are implementing these security measures can be
found here:

Security Measures
Explained<http://www.mtgmx.tk/entries/20471711-security-measures-explained&gt;

“Verified” Accounts are eligible for monthly/daily transaction limits of up
to 5 times the monthly limit and 10 times the daily limit.

In order to apply for the “Verified” account status please attach a copy of
the following documents:
- Your government issued photo ID (passport, permanent residence card or
driver’s license) and
- A scan of either your monthly utility bill (power, phone, TV, gas, water,
etc.) or a certificate of residency issued by your local government.

Thanks,
The Mt.Gox team

Email info of users is from the earlier leak of emails last year.
They are trying to make it look like Mt. Gox is unreliable, under government surveillance/pressured by officials to gain personal information from it's clients.

Combine with a simultaneous DDoS & it's obvious a competitor is attempting to drive traffic to their site this way, too big of a coincidence.

A pretty basic and primitive strategy, if you ask me.
Also Mt. Gox is up now.

Those emails are for luring people into providing their MtGox login details and their identification documents.  The objectives are theft and identity theft, not poaching customers. Phishing scams like this have existed since long before Bitcoin exchanges did and they succeed in part because they lift so much from the actual website of the business whose customers are being targetted - as they have in this case.  Mt Gox is verifying a lot of accounts for AML/KYC purposes and it has explained that on its website - the copy on the fake site is lifted directly from the real Mt Gox website as is the procedure for verifying accounts.  The difference is that the information isn't being sent to Mt Gox but to someone who'll use it to empty exchange accounts and commit identity fraud if possible.

[Revalin]

Look at the urls.  www. mtgmx .tk ...  It's a plain old phishing scam.

If you look at https://blockexplorer.com/ the blocks are moving along at a reasonable rate.  I'd say Bitcoinwatch is broken, possibly related to the other site outages.

[Gabi]

BitcoinWatch is broken, blocks count is wrong.

[theymos]

The forum is hosted by MtGox, so having both go down at the same time isn't surprising.

[jake262144]

The forum is hosted by MtGox

Didn't know that, thankee sir.

[DrKennethNoisewater]

Bastages!