After DDOS attack, BTC-e resumes services

The website went offline following the attacks. Any attempts to reach the bitcoin exchange’s URL returned a blank error-laden screen.

It was a couple of hours before operations resumed after the attacks were mitigated, leading to the website resurfacing before exchange services were enabled again.

The Bulgaria-based bitcoin exchange is no stranger to cybersecurity incidents or controversy in the past. A malfunctioning bot garnered plenty of attention after some frenetic trading in late 2014.

A significant cybersecurity lapse saw a breach from October 2014 that resulted in a stolen data cluster of BTC-e’s users. All 568,355 registered users. The stolen data included user details such as IP addresses, email addresses, dates of registration with the exchange and the user’s preferred exchange.

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Notably, the breach also saw the theft of users’ credentials – usernames and passwords

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To the exchange’s credit, it used a relatively unknown hashing method to secure user passwords, which meant that over half a million passwords are uncrackable, despite their theft.

Earlier this year, the exchange was geo-blocked by a Russian regulator, restricting access to the exchange from users in the Russian federation. The exchange was blacklisted on all Russian internet service providers. The resilient exchange is back up and can be accessed in Russia again.