Kraken Says DDoS Attack Took Bitcoin Exchange Offline
San Francisco-based Bitcoin exchange, Kraken, experienced unexpected downtime today due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on their site. Whether or not the attack was malicious or due to a recent influx of users is unknown.
According to the Kraken support account on Reddit , the company was working to resolve the issue only minutes after reports began flowing in.
“The site is down because we are currently under DDOS attack. We are working to resolve and will update you when we have further information.”
Seeing as the company is in the Pacific time zone, the employees were most likely just waking up as the attack occurred; around 6 a.m. on the west coast.
They also updated their official company Twitter, notifying their customers of the issue once the site was offline.
If the attacks were not malicious, it could be because Kraken has been in the headlines recently due to their aid in the Mt.Gox investigation. After extensively evaluating multiple companies, Kraken was deemed to be the most beneficial due to their stability and reliability in customer support. This new revelation may be a factor in driving more traffic to their site, causing the influx of users and the DDoS attack that followed.
Kraken Exchange Up and Running After 40 Minutes
After 40 minutes of downtime, the exchange was able to stop a DDoS attack and come back online. Upon the success, Kraken sent out a tweet to their customers.
The reddit support account also updated concerned customers, notifying them that the exchange was back online but wanted to know if there were any connection issues.
CCN.com has reached out to Kraken sources for an official statement and will update the article accordingly.
Images from Kraken and Shutterstock.
