- OKCoin posted a tweet regarding the two Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that have occurred in the OKCoin website.
- The website became inaccessible to millions of customers for more than 4 hours.
- Soon after, OKCoin posted another tweet where they have said that the mobile and the API’s were back to their usual states.
Recently, OKCoin posted a tweet regarding the two Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that have occurred in the OKCoin website. As a result of which the website became inaccessible to millions of customers for more than 4 hours. However, they have assured that all the user assets are safe and secured.
Starting at 6:30am PT / 9:30pm HKT today, the OKCoin website experienced two waves of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, which led to the website becoming inaccessible to customers for almost 4 hours. All customer assets are safe.
— Okcoin (@Okcoin) July 13, 2020
Soon after the above tweet, OKCoin posted another tweet where they have said that the mobile and the API’s were back to their usual states. They have confirmed that the engineers have fixed the issues. And lastly, they concluded by apologizing for the inconvenience caused and thanking the customers for co-operating and understanding the issues.
The mobile app and APIs performed as usual. Our engineers have now fixed the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and we appreciate your understanding on this issue.
— Okcoin (@Okcoin) July 13, 2020
Some Years Ago OKCoin Had Faced A DoS Attack
Okcoin is a China-based crypto assets trading platform which is mainly famous for spot trading services. It provides a wide range of variety of fiat currencies such as the US Dollar, Euro, Pound, Japanese Yen and so on and also cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and many other options. The headquarters of this digital exchange is located in Beijing and has an overall staff of 140+ members.
Cyberattacks Mostly Target Bitcoin Exchanges
However, this isn’t the first time that the OKCoin exchange is facing attacks. Some years ago, OkCoin had reported a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on its international platform. However, DDoS attacks are a bit different from DOS attacks because in such attacks multiple hardware targets a single system through a DoS attack. However, the issues were patched with an upgrade.
It has been noticed that all the cyberattacks are targeted towards Bitcoin exchanges. A few years ago, the largest US-based crypto exchange, Bitfinex had reported a similar attack where its website was under a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) whose main objective was to mobilize the entire platform by flooding it with information.
What Happens In A DoS Attack?
In this attack, the main aim is to paralyze the network or shut down the platform. This may be achieved in many ways, for instance, the attacker may congest the target with traffic or flood the target with information that in some way may trigger cash. Some popular flood attacks are butter overflow attacks, ICMP floods, SYN floods. Any DoS attack basically exploits the vulnerabilities of the system that made it a target. Many Blockchain platforms and technologies have upgraded their system to safeguard its platform from such attacks. However, such attacks have unique characteristics which makes them a high-level threat to high profile platforms.