Bitcoin Businesses Targeted in Wave of DDoS Extortion Attacks

A blistering wave of DDoS attacks has been sweeping across digital currency space in November. Kraken, a bitcoin exchange based in San Francisco, was under heavy DDoS attack yesterday, which rendered the exchange inaccessible for a short duration. An extortion letter was also sent to the exchange, demanding an undisclosed bitcoin ransom payment. Staff at Kraken have refused to comply with the demands.

This is not the first time Kraken has been on the receiving end of these types of attacks. The exchange was under heavy DDoS attack at the end October as well.

CryptoCoinsNews, a digital currency news publication, was targeted in an identical DDoS extortion attempt. The perpetrators demanded a 2 BTC payment within 24h, or else the ransom payment would be increased to 3 BTC and a bigger attack would follow.

Bitcoin-related business are not the only ones being targeted. ProtonMail, an anonymous email provided based in Switzerland, was extorted out of 15 BTC earlier this month. The company paid the ransom in the hope that the sustained DDoS attacks would cease, but instead the attacks continued, and the data centers of their ISP were forced offline.

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