![725_Ly9jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy81MTdiMWIwNWRlYThkMjg1NDk3ZDY3NDcxNmE5NzhhZC5qcGc=.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmeAwvUzzrUwuHGVQgynG8DNhhnuaZCqHwFiHXmYcDrExU/725_Ly9jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy81MTdiMWIwNWRlYThkMjg1NDk3ZDY3NDcxNmE5NzhhZC5qcGc%3D.jpg)  

As if the massive influx of users wasn’t enough to deal with, cryptocurrency exchanges have to deal with the constant threat of DDoS attacks.

As Bitcoin price continues to soar, hitting a new high $12,000, people are clamoring to get their hands on the lucrative virtual currency which places a huge strain on exchanges and their servers.

While they do their best to meet the needs of an ever-growing customer base, exchanges are also doing their best to fight against hackers who are looking to cripple their services and find vulnerabilities in an effort to steal Bitcoin.

The most common attack on exchange websites and their platforms is a DDoS attack.

In layman's terms, a DDoS is defined as a distributed denial-of-service attack. It is a cyber-attack on a service provider that looks to disrupt its service, usually by flooding the server with too many requests to handle.

By using multiple sources to attack a server, DDoS attacks can be difficult to stop because they are not started by a single source.

Timing couldn’t be worse
Bitcoin’s mega bull run has seen the biggest ever demand for the virtual currency play havoc on exchanges around the world.

As the various service providers did their best to upgrade systems to handle the increased traffic caused by frantic trading and news users as Bitcoin approached the $11,000 milestone a fortnight ago, two exchanges had to deal with cyber-attacks.

Bitfinex scheduled server maintenance and were hit by a DDOS attack at the same time.