BITMEX REFUNDS TRADERS AFTER LATEST DDOS ATTACKS
2 min read
Ever since the shock Bitcoin crash on Mar 13 when BitMEX went offline due to “hardware issues,” users have been awaiting an explanation. Well, today, they got them. However, “subject to two distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks” isn’t convincing many.
BITMEX HIT BY 2 DDOS ATTACKS
According to an update on the BitMEX blog, supposedly written by CEO Arthur Hayes himself, the team has been “working around the clock” to figure out what happened. Upon its “post-mortem” analysis, the company discovered that it was hit by two DDoS attacks on March 13 at 02:16 UTC and 12:56 UTC.
BitMEX claims that the attacks were initiated by a botnet that had lodged itself in the system previously and waited to attack “during a peak moment of market volatility.”
There’s a deeper explanation about its database CPU and clogged internal traffic queue. There’s more technical language about EBS volume failures and API delays as well.
Hayes also reassures his users that their personal data is safe and that the company is working hard to tighten security. Yet, only two parts of the BitMEX postmortem really matter to its users.
How many traders are being refunded due to the platform’s downtime? And… did BitMEX cause the outage on purpose as some people have suggested?
1) Insane theory of the day: there was no BitMEX hardware issue.
— SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 13, 2020
REFUNDS ETH TRADERS WITH 40.3 BTC
As part of the company’s assessment, it identified 156 accounts that were affected by the “attacks.” These traders have already been compensated with BTC. According to the post:
The BitMEX team identified 156 accounts for which Last Price stops were clearly erroneously triggered on ETHUSD, caused by the unintended late processing of market orders during the first downtime at 02:16 UTC. For each stop that triggered erroneously during this period, BitMEX calculated the delta to the printed Index Price and refunded the user. A total of 40.297 XBT was refunded.
So, that should cause some solace, at least for 156 BitMEX ETH traders. But what about everyone else? BitMEX trader or no? As one angry follower pointed out:
No one cares about the attack, everyone cares bout did BitMex cause the crash?
We have identified the root cause of two DDoS attacks at 02:16 UTC and 12:56 UTC, 13 March 2020. For a full account of what happened and how we are responding, please refer to our blog: https://t.co/RS7YtX1xOD
— BitMEX (@BitMEXdotcom) March 17, 2020
DID BITMEX CAUSE THE BITCOIN CRASH OF MARCH 13? More details.
