I was wondering what the repercussions were if a Bitcoin exchange or website tha

Question

I was wondering what the repercussions were if a Bitcoin exchange or website that holds bitcoins were to succumb to a DoS attack.

In my understanding, all a denial-of-service attack does is deny legitimate users access to the website. However, btc-e.com, a large Bitcoin exchange, and many Tor hidden services (which use Bitcoin as a primary form of payment) seem to fall victim to DoS attacks.

Does this leave these websites vulnerable to bitcoin theft? If not, why perform the attack in the first place?

Thank you all.

Explanation / Answer

DoS attacks do what you said: they prevent users from accessing the service. DoS by itself does not mean that theft is possible, although sometimes DoS attacks happen in order to distract those running the service from noticing another type of attack or to trigger known remediation processes that the attackers can exploit in order to perform a different attack.

In the case where theft is not the end goal, why DoS? Why do some people pull the wings off flies? Some people just like to watch the world burn.

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