Bitcoin Classic Targeted by DDoS Attacks

Bitcoin Classic has fallen under siege recently to DDoS attacks that are targeting anyone running a Bitcoin Classic node on their server. One of Bitcoin.com’s servers was DDoSed with 591 Mbps and was shut down by the ISP for a period of four hours in order to prevent problems for other customers. The attack was the result of a DNS amplifier attack, which uses publicly available DNS servers to overwhelm a particular server. Traffic of the attack was generated by 1,247 different hosts.

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Bitcoin Nodes Under DDoS Attack

Bitcoin.com’s node is separate from the site’s normal infrastructure to ensure that other servers are not affected from attacks such as this. The Node, being hosted by a third party ISP, was not announcing that it was Bitcoin.com, thus it is clear that the attack was not directed towards the site itself, but to anyone that is running a Bitcoin Classic node on their servers.

CTO of Bitcoin.com, Emil Oldenburg, commented on the issue:

The purpose of this attack is to intimidate anyone running Bitcoin Classic. It’s the same modus operandi we saw with Bitcoin XT. This comes at a time when miners have started to mine Bitcoin Classic blocks and already have way more support than XT ever had. Someone, or some people, are buying DDOS attacks towards Classic in an attempt to stop the growth of Classic nodes and blocks. Some Core developers, and Adam Back, have stated that ‘Bitcoin is not a democracy’, while this description is correct for the current governance model; with the censorship, character assassinations, attacks against anyone who disagrees with the party line and sabotage against free choice, the current governance is more similar to North Korea.

Oldenburg further commented that another member of the staff was experiencing similar attacks on their own Bitcoin Classic Node. With the recent support for Bitcoin Classic growing, detractors are attempting to utilize underground methods to stifle the growth of the platform in dedicated and costly attacks on Bitcoin Classic nodes. It is clear that the same modus operandi is responsible for attacks on Bitcoin Classic that attacked Bitcoin XT and that the party responsible for the attacks does not agree with either platform. Without proper knowledge of how to pull of an illegal DDoS attack, outsourcing such attacks can be very costly to maintain over the long run and steps can be taken to mitigate the attacks by those that are affected.

What do you think about the DDoS attacks against Bitcoin Classic? Let us know in the comments below!

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