Bitcoin.org Hit By DDoS Attack

Although the Bitcoin blockchain itself was not affected, the official website that hosts a copy of Bitcoin Core open-source code for developers and any other interested party was. So far, an attack against a blockchain itself has never been executed.

DDoS Attacks Common In Similar Circumstances

According to Cobra – an anonymous dev who helps keep the website up and running – this sort of attack is not uncommon when Bitcoin is spiking high and markets are bullish. He also warned that this particular attack was probably not over just yet. Although the official Bitcoin site is up and running again, DDoS attacks happen in waves through coordinated botnets quite often.

“Basically, we got hit with a large DDoS, which is quite common around ATHs (all-time highs) and bull markets. It took us down for a while but for now, we’re back up, but  we might go down on and off periodically depending on how long the attackers want to continue attacking.”

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which many devices infected by malware are coordinated by a bad actor in order to overwhelm an IP address with web traffic, slowing down traffic for normal users – and often taking the site offline completely for certain periods of time.

For those eager to help host the source code until the DDoS attacks cease, crypto enthusiasts have set up a torrent where the code can be downloaded from and hosted.

The attack is being led by mostly Russian IPs – although this does not necessarily mean the attack is coming from there, as bad actors nearly always use VPNs, allowing them to pretend to be from somewhere else.

In addition, infected devices carrying out the attack can belong to anyone, anywhere – and the owner of the device will almost certainly be unaware that their device is being used for nefarious purposes.