Jack previously mentioned that Million Dollar Homepage had suffered a denial of service attack. Yesterday Alex Tew, the student who created the site, put out a statement on his blog confirming that the site has been subject to an attack from hackers.
I can confirm that MillionDollarHomepage.com has been subjected to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by malicious hackers who have caused the site to be extremely slow loading or completely unavailable since last Thursday, 12th January 2006.
I can also confirm that a demand for a substantial amount of money was made which makes this a criminal act of extorsion. The FBI are investigating and I'm currently working closely with my hosting company, Sitelutions, to bring the site back online as soon as possible. More news soon.
This morning, it's become apparent that a group of hackers calling themselves The Dark Group launched a DDoS on milliondollarhomepage.com after Tew refused to pay them $50,000.
"I haven't replied to any of them, as I don't want to give them the satisfaction and I certainly don't intend to pay them any money," Tew told the BBC. Apparently the FBI and British police are on the case, but I just spoke to the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit who said this wasn't falling under their auspices.
DDoS is, of course, one of the crudest tools in the net blackmailer's box... but that doesn't stop it being effective.
