Extra Life Charity Site Hit By DDoS Attack - UPDATED

[Andy Chalk]

Extra Life Charity Site Hit By DDoS Attack - UPDATED

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/ExtraLife4Kids/status/396720855881101312]​

The Extra Life website has been brought down by a DDoS attack, meaning that donations to the game-based charity event for kids cannot be taken.

Extra Life is a simple but very cool idea [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/128830-Extra-Life-Play-Videogames-to-Support-Childrens-Hospitals]: Gamers raise money for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals by taking pledges and then playing games - videogames, board games, tabletop miniatures, whatever - marathon-style, for 25 solid hours. The event began at 8 am today, November 2, and ends at 8 am on November 3, a 25-hour stretch thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time.

Unfortunately, the Extra Life Facebook page [http://extra-life.org].

"As frustrating as this is for everyone involved, it pales in comparison to what the kids we're trying to save go through. That reality, for me personally, is about the only thing keeping me somewhat calm right now," he continued. "I am very angry and very sorry. You deserve better than this. The kids deserve better than this. Extra Life has given a lot of us some of the happiest moments in our lives. This is not one of those moments."

Adams asked that supporters "please hang with us through this," as they are working to get the site back up as quickly as possible. We'll update as soon as we hear more, and you can also keep up to date with events on Twitter [https://twitter.com/extralife4kids].

UPDATE: Extra Life is back. Do a solid for sick kids at extra-life.org [http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?].


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[Compatriot Block]

Why? What message could you possibly want to make by doing this?

DDoS attacks usually smack of flimsy justifications to me, but there is absolutely no excuse for this one other than shooting for "colossal shithead" status.

 

[Commander Obvious]

Wow-- I...

Wow.

I'll make sure to get a donation in when things are back up and running.

 

[TheProfessor234]

Planning on participating for this next weekend at a college event. Really hope this doesn't happen again.

This is just impossible to understand why anyone would do this. If it was for infamy, I feel they would of revealed themselves by now.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

What the Hell? Why?!

DDoSing a company website I can rationalize. DDoSing a government portal, I can see some people doing. DDoSing file-sharing portals is something I can wrap my head around in a certain capacity. Fuck, I even saw trolls back in my high school days, who used to DDoS the shitty Geocities pages of unpopular kids with weird interests or opinions!

This, though? Why? What is there to gain from this? Hacker cred? Money? Fuck, even if I were some sort of storied and recognized Black Hat type, I'd find this beneath me.

Ten to one it's just some douchebag Script Kiddie with too much talent and not enough brains.

Also face value journalism FTW!

I think the quoted sources would have enough honesty and savvy to realize that their datacenter couldn't take more than X amount of pledge or donation requests. I honestly doubt this is just a server overload being misrepresented as an attack.

 

[Saltyk]

This is the lowest of the low. I find this to be completely reprehensible that someone would disable a charity's website during a charity drive like this. I'm not one to wish death or illness on people. But I would find it all too appropriate for the person or people behind this to be diagnosed with cancer in the future.

Games and gamers are too often associated with negative traits and stories. Often those are erroneous. So I applaud groups like Extra Life and Child's Play that do good in the world. And they should get much more press than any of the other stories we see all too often.

Ahh part of me just finds this hilarious. Let's play the conspiracy game! What if they didn't get hit by a DDOS but people just wanted them to take their money en masse? Thus they made this up on twitter to make news and thus get more donations!

GENIUS!

Also face value journalism FTW!

.....
I won't say what I really want to say to you.

Instead, I will say that Extra Life was given some exposure via news sites in the previous days. It may not have been much, but they were acknowledged and their efforts were made known. I'm certain that the organizers had never done anything so dishonest in the past as lie about something like this in the past. There is no reason to assume they would now.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Remember last Guy Fawkes day (or the one before that), someone vandalised a website for a charity dealing with disabled kids, cause they wanted to stick it to the man or whatever?

 

[Andy Shandy]

Well this is one of the scummiest things I've seen in a while. I can sometimes see the justification for some DDoS attacks but there isn't any for this.

Hopefully, the news of this being hits at least helps to bring awareness of Extra Life to more people.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Remember last Guy Fawkes day (or the one before that), someone vandalised a website for a charity dealing with disabled kids, cause they wanted to stick it to the man or whatever?

It's not even "stick it to the man", it's "hurr hur, look how hardcore I am screwing with people who try to help others, I'm totally a bro".

There are some people so useless that hampering the hard work of others is the only difference they can make in the world.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Remember last Guy Fawkes day (or the one before that), someone vandalised a website for a charity dealing with disabled kids, cause they wanted to stick it to the man or whatever?

It's not even "stick it to the man", it's "hurr hur, look how hardcore I am screwing with people who try to help others, I'm totally a bro".

There are some people so useless that hampering the hard work of others is the only difference they can make in the world.

Oh sure, that's why they did it, but they did it as part of Anonymous's attack on dodgy companies, pretending there was some moral high ground to be had. A day either way, and no pics of Guy Fawkes masks wouldn't have been so hypocritical.

 

[The Lunatic]

Well, this is going to cause a surge in donations.


Maybe that was the plan all along!


Also, for what it's worth, it's unlikely these guys have their own data centre, they're likely sharing it with some other service that was the target of a DDoS, and were hit by locality.

 

[1337mokro]

Either they did it themselves to spark pity donations or there really exist someone so pathetic that they would DDOS a charity site for sick children.

I am leaning towards the first because I can understand shameless acts in the name of charity. I cannot accept the fact there exist a neckbeard basement dweller that goes around bombing charities.

 

[Dante dynamite]

I heard that it was done because chris-chan was participating in the stream it was probably some W3 a3r l3g10n 1337 H4XXOR thinking that they could be funny by trolling the charity since it got a lot of publicity on 4chan.

 

[VanTesla]

Either they did it themselves to spark pity donations or there really exist someone so pathetic that they would DDOS a charity site for sick children.

I am leaning towards the first because I can understand shameless acts in the name of charity. I cannot accept the fact there exist a neckbeard basement dweller that goes around bombing charities.

You honestly can't accept there would be such a person in a world that has a history of genocidal maniacs and psychopaths? I mean it could be a stunt to raise more awareness of the site via media, but with no actual evidence to show that is the case I will go with it being a horrible person that just likes screwing with people because they can... It could be possible that this warped person that did the attack had the opposite intention of actually helping the site via just getting it more media attention, but that is still screwed up logic to me...

 

[Weaver]

As a severe cynic: one does have to wonder if this was to gain free publicity on news sites.

 

[Falterfire]

Are we sure it was an intentional attack? It's possible it was a Friendly Hug Of Death from a suddenly influx of attention from another site. I don't know how much traffic the site was designed to handle, but I've seen enough sites go down due to a Reddit Hug of Death to know it's possible.