Altcoin News: Electrum Cryptocurrency Wallet Has Been Subjected to Another DoS Attack

April 9, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Another DoS attack on the popular Electrum cryptocurrency wallet led users to lose millions of dollars.

Electrum reported that the attack involved a network of infected devices, numbering 140,000 units. Hackers are trying to disable the Electrum server and at the same time send hacked versions of the wallet to users, the installation of which leads to the loss of funds. To do this, the attackers created their own Electrum servers. If the user synchronizes his wallet with such a server, the program will offer to “upgrade” and download the hacked client.

“The total amount stolen is in the millions of dollars so far, with a single person alone losing almost $140,000, based on our analysis,” said one computer security expert. “The DoS attacks are a new level, which only began about a week ago. People have seen 25 Gigabits per second worth of traffic being flooded at community run servers.”

Lead Electrum developer Thomas Voegtlin said that the attack will be able to cope in the near future. He also noted that users who have not updated the wallet application for a long time and that is the reason they are at the greatest risk. In addition, the developer urged users to run their own servers with legitimate software — this will help to quickly fight off the attack.

Note that the Electrum wallet’s security problems are not the first to occur. The last attack was recorded in February of this year, and at the end of March, it became known about the launch of the Electrum phishing wallet ad on the YouTube video service.