To answer the question in the title, apparently yes. Enough to put out a pretty well-orchestrated FUD campaign. Short because it was dismantled in under 24 hours, but still... enough to make some wonder, maybe, if they hold too much Bitcoin on the website, as opposed to other places?
That's a good question to ask, always, about any website and platform that manages crypto or money "in your name". But sometimes you have to wonder if alternatives are better, the same, or worse, in a crypto world that moves more and quicker toward centralization than we would have thought even last cycle.
Freebitco.in is one of the early players in the faucet world and it's a big one, now including casino-like features like betting, which probably became more important than the faucet aspect of the business. But they know how to attract savers too. After all, some of them will lose their BTC by gambling them away, but that's their problem.
At over 53m users, it's definitely a big player in the crypto world.
Now, it's likely many of these users are not active anymore on Freebitco.in. Some are probably not in crypto either after all this time. But still, we are talking about tens of millions of users, whereas crypto as a whole has a few hundred million people. So a good chunk of the people in crypto is or has been using Freebitco.in at some point.
What happened?
During the last 24 hours, we had this succession of events:
- the website went down without warning or any communication from the team
- in the meantime, a video was shared on X from a new account, sharing the alleged method they used to hack Freebitco.in, including the cleared huge withdrawal(s) to Binance - for anyone who doesn't like to question and check everything, this was a pretty good fake, enough to fuel the FUD
- after 18 hours, the freebitco.in team shared on X that this was a DDoS attack they have been fighting and that funds are safe.
Shortly after, the website went back online. - UPDATE: Looks like the website is still under DDoS attacks and is currently down again, as reported in the comments. Note: Don't make it worse by refreshing all the time!
- UPDATE 2: Problem solved.
Looks like I caught this tweet right after it was posted:
The interesting fact is, that if we are talking about DDoS attacks, they were well planned. I imagine the strongest one was at the beginning, which knocked out freebitco.in's website.
Then, active users of the website helped the attackers, by refreshing the site to see when it gets back online.
Then, the news started to spread and old users who hadn't logged in in a while probably wanted to see for themselves.
Then, the video with the hack was posted and amplified things.
Sounds like indeed they experienced a few waves of DDoS attacks started by the initial attackers and then amplified by the users themselves.
Would have helped if they communicated earlier about the DDoS attack and asked users to be patient and not to refresh all the time? Yes, with the DDoS attack. But users were worried about funds being lost, and I guess they wanted confirmation all funds were safe before saying anything. The period of silence didn't help.
Freebitco.in is still one of the only faucets I use and was curious what happened. It may be a good story with some things to learn from here.
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This might be the first time I've heard of freebitcoin. DDOS attacks have been pretty uncommon lately, maybe because there are better protection against it. Since BTC has been increasing, website that deal with it should be prepared for more attacks.
They have at least a minimum protection against it. They use Cloudflare. But maybe it wasn't enough. And I'm sure BTC honeypots will continue to be tested.
Site still seems down for me. Think they're going to put in some extra Cloudflare protection after this.
Yep, now it's down for me again. Looks like the DDoS attacks haven't stopped. But while it worked, everything seemed in order.
What's the goal? Plan FUD & Short BTC??? Is it state actor? Imagine internet had RC-like system. Users will have to pay for bandwidth in regenerating currency. Could be a big help to reduce DDoS attacks. Just thinking out loud 🤔
Could be just growing competition for native bitcoin.
Imagine the price of HIVE or whatever would give the RCs for the internet. 😀
Imagine how unhappy owners of bots/AIs with access to the internet would be in such a scenario.
Obviously, that's unlikely to ever exist, since there needs to be a network (like Hive) over the entire internet, to make RCs work.
Why does anyone still do DDOS attacks lol so freakin stupid.
There are good protection measures against DDoS attacks these days, but it seems they are evolving too, along with the protections against them.
I think communication is key when such attacks happen. Users can sometimes make it worse or even fall victim to more exploitations. I did came across this site before but didn't dig deeper into it. I hope everything gets resolved soon.
It was resolved.
I have the same opinion. They should have communicated more (and sooner) to let the users know what was going on. I believe they amplified the whole thing by not communicating better. And probably some users freaked out.
Good to know that it was resolved!
Exactly, without clarity, users will freak out, which in most cases just makes things worse.
It's nice to hear that the website and funds are all right. I haven't been on that site for a while though.
Yeah, it's working again. Well, I'm a premium there since they started the premium program. It more than paid for itself, even if I only go in once a day and use my free premium rolls.
Something that is important to know is when you are relying on a third party to hold your Bitcoin. The APY might be interesting, but you need to be cautious.
The question is nowadays what is and isn't third-party, especially when we talk about bitcoin? Because I don't trust Trezor or Ledger like I used to. And hard disks fail too. So yeah, there are various degrees of risk, but for me, with bitcoin, holding it in different places seems the strategy that is the safest.
Freebitco.in... I haven't used it for a long time since I'm not a faucet hunter anymore 😂. I see that Freebitco.in is still kicking until now. Sad to hear about the late notice of Freebitco.in team made a FUD. Hope they keep up with their job to control as Freebitco.in already on the old legit faucet list.
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Yep, Freebitco.in is the only faucet I still use. The site seems ok right now, after some downtime and a false start.
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Hello, @gadrian. Thank you for your article on the DDoS attacks on freebitco.in. Wow, I'm really glad all funds are safe for all of the members. I haven't ever really used this program but maybe I will now. It's been around for a while. I looked up the definition of a DDoS attack What a waste of energy that could of been used in a more positive manner. What site do you think is the safest place to keep or store one's bitcoin? Thank you.
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That's a difficult question and becoming more difficult by the day.
I think the better option would be to have it in more places. Nothing is 100% secure. Not if you store it at home. Not if it's in safe storage. Not if it's on a centralized exchange or a smart contract.
OK @gadrian yes in a lot of places for sure is the best! Thank you.
🌄 Good morning (here)! ☕ Interesting read, @gadrian. I had never heard of this, before reading your post.
That said, this stood out to me:
From your description, this was a case in point, when evaluating the power of some of these "single points of failure," where centralization of a "service" results in the mess you have described here.
Inside Hive, we are currently experiencing a ... "ripple effect" ... from the "single point of failure," in one of our own vital services.
Well, we can only hope, in the ... "post mortem" ... that lessons are being learned. For preventing, ideally, any reoccurrence, for the next time. For to not expect a "next time," is delusional ...
That is true, we have to be very careful about single points of failure. Sometimes the convenience of their service compared to options that may not be as easy to use but are safer makes us forget or ignore the danger that is always there.
Been a freebitco.in user since 2017, never had trouble with it until now. The good thing is that I've withdrawn all my referral earnings before the attack, its a lucky coincidence I guess. What do you use the website for? Gambling or referrals?
That was good timing. 😀
Certainly not gambling! It's unlikely I'll be lured by gambling any time soon.
So, referrals, I take it? Because I wouldn't use the website for anything else other than their generous commission rates.
I don't have many active referrals, but yeah, that's probably the best way to use it if you have the active referrals.
Hope it is not that the website is about to shutdown
The website is back online.
It’s been a long time since I checked the website though but it was one of the platforms where is usually earn well back then but I stopped because I was not getting enough surveys and it was the main thing there then
I don't remember it having surveys, but maybe you used it in the early days before I did.
Hello, can i suggest you to post this in in the faucet claimer community
A new community based on faucets/airdrops and other earnings.
You are free to reblog it there. 😀
and now X api is down. what's happening.
Is it?
I guess I have hear about this website so many years ago. Yea I can remember