Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it!
Are there any attacks which seem to be common amongst exchanges themselves?
Most attacks now are Layer 7 DDOS attacks. They attack ports 80 and 443 to prevent access from authorized users. Mt.Gox used prolexic to mitigate the attack. There are different ways an attacker can DDOS a server...the best defense is to mitigate the attack. However, if the attacker is really nasty; they will attack the ISP the mitigation service buys bandwidth from. However, this is worst case scenario and it would require more than 300 Gigabits worth of traffic.
Take a look at this:
http://blog.rivalhost.com/12-types-of-ddos-attacks-used-by-hackers/And This:
https://mtgox.com/pdf/20130424_ddos_statement_and_faq.pdfBest,
Cameron Halter
https://ibtcard.com/