Denial of Service Attacks

A denial of service attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target with a flood of internet traffic. In the context of financial exchanges, this can involve flooding the order gateway to prevent legitimate traders from submitting orders.

Such attacks can cause massive losses if traders cannot close out positions during market moves. Exchanges employ sophisticated firewalls, rate limiting, and traffic scrubbing services to defend against these threats.

The goal of the attacker is often to cause market chaos or extort the exchange. Maintaining uptime against such attacks is a core requirement for any reliable financial institution.