One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex, was hit by a cyberattack yesterday. The exchange was offline for several hours but has since returned to normal operations.
Yesterday the exchange Bitfinex came under a cyberattack that lasted several hours. The site experienced heavy traffic beginning at around 3:00 PM, and preliminary reports suggest a DDoS attack was responsible.
Bitfinex is currently under extreme load. We are investigating the issue and will keep you all up to date as we learn more.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
The exchange briefly went offline while implementing a new update. Hackers appear to have taken advantage of that window to overwhelm the site with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS is a type of cybercrime in which an attacker floods an IT infrastructure—in this case, Bitfinex’s website—with traffic to render it unavailable.
The issue was resolved relatively quickly, and Bitfinex has returned to normal trading and funding operations.
Trading and funding is live once again. Thank you for your patience.
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) June 5, 2018
Earlier this year, cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck suffered a different and far more damaging breach, in which hackers stole over 260,000 NEM coins—amounting to roughly €435 million at the time. Incidents like these underscore that keeping cryptocurrencies on exchanges carries inherent risks.
For greater security, users are advised to consider alternative storage options such as hardware wallets, which provide an extra layer of protection by keeping private keys offline.