Charity Gaming Marathon Site Temporarily Taken Down By Hackers

Earlier in the day, Extra Life, an annual fund raiser held by Sarcastic Gamer was down for more than an hour because of a DDoS attack, organisers said.

The site returned earlier this morning.

Extra Life benefits the Children’s Miracle Network, and has been held annually since 2008, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars since then. In it, teams of gamers play video games, soliciting pledges from donors in the same way other as other participation-based fund raisers, such as walk-a-thons.

In an earlier statement about the site outage sent by email (and posted to the event’s Facebook page) organisers said:

We’ve discovered that the Extra Life website experienced a DDoS attack agianst our datacenter. I am not sure what kind of person would DDoS a charitable initiative.

I am so sorry that you are going through this frustration today. Our entire team is purely heartbroken that someone would do this. But it has happened.

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.

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.

Please hang with us through this.

It is important that we spread the word. Please get on every form of social media you can and tell your friends what happened. We can overcome this together

Be ready to make up for lost time and share the news when we go live!


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