Exness stands strong against DDoS attacks

Dear clients and partners,

Following our launch of the industry-first Unlimited Leverage in March and successful offline events, we have come under a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, a common cybercrime that is usually launched against high profile businesses and organizations.

In the week leading up to our meeting with partners in China, a spate of targeted DDoS attacks was launched against our website and trading servers. Although we have had experience managing such attacks over the past five years and have built a very secure system, the evolving and unpredictable nature of DDoS attacks makes it a cybercrime that is difficult for any institution to build a 100 per cent defense against. Additionally, the ongoing DDoS attacks adopt a simultaneous, multi-pronged approach, using ICMP, TCP, DNS response, NTP, SYN, and UDP flood techniques to overload the system with malicious traffic at approximately 30 Gbps.

After successful restoration of our website within 24 hours after the first DDoS attack on April 6, 2016, and with enhanced protection from our hosting provider, Webzilla, the attackers changed their strategy and have since been targeting our trading servers. Given the intricate link between trading servers and platforms, MetaQuotes, the provider of MetaTrader 4, is assisting our support and IT departments, who are working on a 24/7 basis, to enhance the systems. On top of that, we are also working with two other external vendors, who are proficient in tackling DDoS attacks, to reinforce the infrastructure.

Although the teams have been successful in managing the multiple daily attacks, trading services may still be intermittent and MT4 connection may be slow. As a service provider, we will continue to manage these assaults and provide timely updates on the situation. At the same time, we would also like to thank you for your kind understanding and patience.

About DDoS attacks

What:
A highly-noticeable cybercrime affecting service provision, DDoS attack is a popular cybercrime adopted by cyber vandals. Unlike hacks, no user data or funds are compromised in a DDoS attack.

How:
DDoS attacks are launched via botnet, which sends millions of dummy traffic (such as fake access requests) to a targeted server all at the same time. This floods the internet tubes, overwhelms the server and thereby shuts the server down. As such, online services become unavailable to a business' or institution's intended users.

Who:
A cybercrime that is easy to perform but difficult to defend against, businesses, organizations, and institutions are often victims of such assaults.

Why:
Motivations behind DDoS attacks vary and can range from extortions and competition to activism and boredom.