Big Bitcoin Exchanges halt trading after experiencing DDoS attacks targeting ‘Transaction Malleability’

The Bitcoin story is getting murkier by the passing moment. Yesterday techworm had reported about the dispute between the Bitcoin’s largest exchange Mt.Gox and Bitcoin Foundation regarding the responsibility of fixing the bug found by Mt.Gox. Earlier this week, after detecting the bug which is caused due to ‘Transaction Malleability’ which does not confirm the transaction thus leaving both the buyer and seller in a bit of quandary. Yesterday many other exchanges experienced a massive concerted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The first of the exchanges to report this massive DDoS attacks were Blockchain and Bitstamp.  The attack was so severe that both the exchanges had to halt Bitcoin trading.  Both issued a statement saying that they were under DDoS attack and this attack targets the ‘Transaction Malleability’ issue and is preventing some transactions from being confirmed.  Andreas Antonopoulos, Blockchain’s chief security officer, said that the attack was “massive and concerted”, with parallel transactions being executed to create a “fog of confusion” around the currency. Bitstamp, the other exchange which was targeted, issued a statement that the alleged attackers was using transaction malleability “to temporarily disrupt balance checking”.
Big Bitcoin Exchanges halt trading after experiencing DDoS attacks targeting 'Transaction Malleability'
At that point other exchanges had not stopped the Bitcoin trading but have issued pressers warning of the delays that may happen with the Bitcoin transactions. All the Bitcoin exchanges and the Foundation have now begun a concerted effort on war footing to detect the loophole and fix it.  Bitcoin Foundation, which till yesterday was shirking any responsibility towards the ‘Transaction Malleability’ issue today issued a statement that traders should “rest assured that we have identified the issue and are collectively and collaboratively working on a solution”.  The Chief Scientist at Bitcoin Foundation, Gavin Andresen, said that there were bugs in both the main Bitcoin software and in that of exchanges, leading to severity of the problem.

“This is a denial-of-service attack; whoever is doing this is not stealing coins, but is succeeding in preventing some transactions from confirming,” he added. “It’s important to note that DoS attacks do not affect people’s bitcoin wallets or funds.” He also added that, “This is something that cannot be corrected overnight,”

Big Bitcoin Exchanges halt trading after experiencing DDoS attacks targeting 'Transaction Malleability'
What ever may be the reasons assigned to this new menace the Bitcoin is facing, but it is slowly and surely eroding the respectability and the market value of the Crypto-currency. Though yesterdays attacks did little harm to the market value of Bitcoin, a big value erosion is expected in case the Bitcoin Exchanges and Bitcoin Foundation dont find a remedy to the ‘Transaction Malleability’ issue.  

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