Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox faced massive hacker offensives last month, coming under about 150,000 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks per second for several days ahead of its spectacular failure, a report said yesterday.
The Tokyo-based exchange, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month and admitted that it has lost half a billion dollars in the digital currency, has come under serious cyberattacks in particular since about Feb. 7, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
While Mt. Gox faced hacker attempts to steal bitcoins, the exchange also confronted massive DDoS attacks, crippling its systems, the newspaper said.
Photo: AFP
Under DDoS attacks, hackers hijack multiple computers to send a flood of data to the target, crippling its computer system.
The attacks on Mt. Gox lasted for several days and many bitcoins were stolen, the Yomiuri said.
Mt. Gox’s lawyers said 750,000 bitcoins belonging to the firm’s customers had gone missing, along with about 100,000 units that the company owned.
Even so, Britain’s first machine for dispensing digital currency opened for business in a cafe near London’s “Silicon roundabout” tech hub in east London on Friday, offering customers the ability to exchange bank notes for bitcoins.
Nick Letchford, managing director of the group that owns the Old Shoreditch Station cafe, decided to install the machine after noticing the popularity of bitcoins among his customers working nearby in the digital industries.
“It gets used regularly based on where we are located,” he said. “There are lots of technology orientated consumers within our area and it caters very easily for them.”
He sees a mainstream future for the virtual currency, even though the top bitcoin exchange has collapsed and the currency has been volatile due to speculation as well as prone to criminal activities.
The currency came into existence in 2009, with the value negotiated by individuals chatting on bitcoin forums. After trading for cents per bitcoin for the first two years of its existence, it began a frenzied climb in 2011 that took it to US$40 a coin in late 2012 and US$1,100 last year, before falling off to the current US$610 level.
Customers who use the machine in east London are charged an 8 percent commission.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure