Bitcoin.org Goes Offline Temporarily After A Scam Attack
Bitcoin.org, one of the first websites about Bitcoin (BTC) went offline temporarily following an attack by online scammers.
It is the second time that the Bitcoin.org website has been targeted by hackers, the last time being in July this year when it was targeted by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
Bitcoin.org’s anonymous curator, Cobra, and Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo were among the first people to report the hack.
https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1440905892543832064?s=20
Before the website went offline, users reported that it was showing announcements requesting donations and scammers had already reportedly managed to collect $17K sent to their addresses.
After noticing the catastrophe, Collaro warned people not to send any funds to the address used in the fake announcement displayed on the website.
https://twitter.com/TheBlueMatt/status/1440886266409537538?s=20
Corallo also went ahead to send a query to Namecheap which temporarily disabled the website.
Shortly after, Cobra tweeted that the issue is being looked into and that the website could be down for some days.
https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1440905892543832064?s=20
Hackers exploited a flaw in the DNS
According to Cobra, hackers had exploited a flaw in the website’s Domain Name System (DNS). However, the website’s servers and Cloudflare accounts were not affected.
DNS work is to translate IP addresses to allow clients to reach the original servers.
Bitcoin.org woes
In July this year, Bitcoin.org also fell victim to a DDoS attack accompanied by a ransom of undisclosed Bitcoin (BTC) amount.
A week before the DDoS attack, Bitcoin.org had been ordered by a court in the UK to stop hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper after the court ruled in favor of Bitcoin SV (BSV) and self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto proponent Craig Wright.
Since Nakamoto left the Bitcoin community in 2011, Bitcoin.org has changed hands countless times with Cobra being the current co-owner of the site since 2013.
In May 2020, Roger Ver, who is an advocate of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and owner of Bitcoin.com, showed interest in buying the Bicoin.org site. However, following accusations by some members of the Bitcoin community alleging that Ver created confusion after promoting Bitcoin Cash as the real Bitcoin, the deal did not materialize.
A month later, one of the Bitcoin.org overseers complained about losing access to the site and pointed to a potential breach.
What is Bitcoin.org?
Bitcoin.org website remains a momentous cryptocurrency website to date having been registered in August 2008, which was a few months before the first Bitcoin block was mined in January 2009 by Nakamoto.
The website is dedicated to being an educational resource about Bitcoin and it also hosts the Bitcoin Core, which is the software that is used when connecting to the Bitcoin network to run a node.
