On June 18, the website of the USDT stablecoin issuer was hit by a massive DDoS attack. The company’s technical director, Paolo Ardoino, said the attackers demanded a “ransom” from Tether.

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This morning @Tether_to received a ransom demand to avoid mass DDOSs.
They already tried once.
About 2k reqs/5min in a normal day
The attack brought us to 8M reqs/5min. pic.twitter.com/rWEan5VNFX

— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) 18 June 2022

“This morning, a ransom was requested from Tether to prevent major DDoS attacks. Once they already tried to do it. We usually get around 2000 requests within 5 minutes. The attack brought the figure to 8 million requests in 5 minutes,” Ardoino wrote.

The Tether.io portal allows you to exchange stablecoins for US dollars in a 1:1 ratio. The minimum usage amount is 100,000 USDT.

According to the company’s CTO, Tether took steps to mitigate the impact of the attack, and the attackers “relaxed” the pressure on the system. He also stressed that the event will not affect his ability to use positions in USDT.

Despite the collapse of the cryptocurrency market, the stablecoin has maintained parity with the US dollar, but its capitalization continues to decline. It fell below $70 billion on Friday and is worth $68.15 billion at the time of writing.

Since the beginning of May, the USDT index has dropped 18%. On the contrary, the capitalization of USD Coin (USDC), from the Central consortium, which is its closest competitor, increased by 12% in the same period.

Recall that in mid-May, USDT diverged from its peg to the US dollar and tested the $0.94 level. At the same time, USDC and Binance USD (BUSD) looked relatively stable.

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