CEX.IO company blog | In 2021, the number of DDoS attacks on crypto services increased – what does this have to do with?

According to a StormWall report, the number of DDoS attacks in the financial sector increased sharply in the first quarter2021.Moreover, if a year ago hackers attacked mainly banks, now they have shifted their focus to crypto services. Dmitry Volkov, technical director of the international crypto exchange CEX.IO, commented for Kommersant on what may be causing this interest.

Indeed, in the first quarter of 2021The crypto industry experienced several waves of hype at once. Over the first five months of this year, we have repeatedly observed a sharp increase in interest from existing and new users, and throughout the first quarter of 2021, high activity was registered in the crypto market. For example, on the CEX.IO exchange, trading turnover in the first three months of this year was approximately 4 times higher than in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 15 times higher than in the same period in the first quarter of 2020.

Growing user activity - directevidence of business expansion, and therefore the price of every minute of downtime for crypto services. Their great popularity makes them increasingly interesting targets for attacks. By blocking such a service during periods of high activity, hackers can gain more advantages. Firstly, it will be much easier to carry out a DDoS attack on a portal that is under high load from real clients. Secondly, downtime during this period will be undesirable for the service owner, because it will lead to large financial losses. Therefore, the likelihood of paying a ransom to stop the attack and restore the service is higher.

However, according to the StormWall report,only 3.7% of DDoS attacks today are in the financial sector. And although today most of them are no longer aimed at banks, but at crypto services, the latter cannot yet be called the main target for hackers. But it was the explosive growth in the popularity of cryptocurrency services in 2021 that caused the increase in the share of attacks falling on this market segment. Judging by the current trends and accumulated statistics, the interest of cyber attackers in such resources will continue to grow, so in the near future we can expect an increase in the number of DDoS attacks initially aimed at cryptocurrency services.

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