Troubles for Bitcoin.org are far from over. The website, which happens to be one of the oldest Bitcoin sites designed specifically for educational purposes, has been hit with a denial-of-service attack [DDoS] attack. This was reported by the pseudonymous webmaster of Bitcoin.org, ‘Cøbra’ who tweeted,
“Bitcoin.org getting hit with an absolutely massive DDoS attack and a ransom demand to send Bitcoin or they’ll continue. I don’t think I’ve been this offended in a while. Ungrateful scum.”
The latest reports revealed that the attackers want to be paid off with BTC worth just over $17,000.
According to Cloudfare, DDoS is a cyber-attack where the malicious entity seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users momentarily or indefinitely which involves disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet.
This news comes just a week after nChain’s controversial exec Craig Wright won a default judgment in his copyright infringement action against ‘Cøbra.’ The London’s High Court had ruled that the website discontinue hosting its copy of the Bitcoin white paper after the owner of the site remained absent from the ruling which made it easier for Wright to win by default.
While the website is now functioning normally, it is important to note that prominent crypto platforms have come under DDoS attacks over the past few years.
A brief history on Bitcoin.org
The website in question was first registered and owned by the world’s largest cryptocurrency’s first two developers, Satoshi Nakamoto and Martti Malmi. After Nakamoto left the project, he gave ownership of the domain to other individuals in addition to the BTC developers, to expand responsibility and prevent any one person or group from easily attaining power over the project.
It has come a long way since then. During 2011-2013, the website was originally used for rolling out new versions of the software that is now known as Bitcoin Core. In 2013, it underwent a major revamp and was redesigned to include several pages, listing additional BTC software, and building the translation system. The next year, developer documentation was added which consisted of updates, fixes, suggestions, and amendments from members of the community. After a decade later, the site claims to be an independent open source project with contributors all across the globe.