Bitcoin.org, the website which hosts bitcoinâs code, is back up after a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) took the site down in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The website is home to Bitcoin Core, the most popular software version of bitcoinâs code. To be clear: Bitcoinâs blockchain itself was not attacked, only the website hosting one copy of its open-source code.
Read more: What Is Bitcoin?
While the site was inaccessible, Bitcoiners disseminated the software to newcomers wanting to download the code via a torrenting service, an open-source marketplace for sharing data. Bitcoin Coreâs client includes a âmagnet linkâ (that random alphanumeric string in the below tweet) which can be manually shared to download Bitcoin Core from services like uTorrent and BitTorrent. From this link, the user can locate the hash for where Bitcoin Core is stored on these services and download the software.
Called âdistributed denial of service,â a DDoS attack occurs when a person or group uses multiple devices to spam a server or system with data requests, clogging its bandwidth and typically rendering a website inaccessible.
Bitcoin.org is now live again. Cobra, a pseudonymous developer who helps maintain Bitcoin.org, told CoinDesk that DDoS attacks are not uncommon during hot price action and that this specific attack may not be over.
âBasically, we got hit with a large DDoS, which is quite common around ATHs (all-time highs) and bull markets. It took us down for a while but for now weâre back up, but we might go down on and off periodically depending on how long the attackers want to continue attacking.â
Cobra told CoinDesk that the IP traffic from the attack is Russian, but itâs anybodyâs guess where the attackers are actually located. Thatâs because, in addition to the attackers using privacy preserving tools like virtual networks, most attackers launch DDoS attacks remotely from malware-infested devices, pseudonymous and independent researcher 6102 told CoinDesk.
A DDoS against a distributed network like a blockchainâcalled a sybil attackâhas never occurred on Bitcoinâs blockchain.