Operation Supply Drop’s third annual 8-Bit Salute 24 hour charity game marathon went live last night at 11pm AEST. By 12am, hackers had disabled the military gaming charity’s website via DDoS attack.
Operation Supply Drop, previously featured on Kotaku, is a charity organisation dedicated to providing American military personnel with video games. The idea is that video games can help soldiers deal with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
The 8-Bit Salute is an annual 24-hour gaming marathon and donation drive, held in conjunction with Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter. While the marathon itself is still going strong, the Operation Supply Drop webpage was taken down by the charity is calling an sustained, organised distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). As of this writing, the website is still down.
The #8BitSalute site has been attacked, please continue to make donations to donations@operationsupplydrop.org while we get it worked out
— OperationSupplyDrop (@OpSupplyDrop) May 17, 2014
Judging from Twitter responses to the charity’s further posts on the attack, the gaming community is largely outraged by the situation. If fact, I’m guessing more people are talking about the charity marathon now than would have been had the attacks not occurred. Thanks for the bump, hackers.
While the Operation Supply Drop website is closed for donations, folks interested in donating can do so directly through PayPal at this link here. Or they can hit the Rosster Teeth website and pick up the special event poster for $US10, with all proceeds going directly to Operation Supply Drop.
As for the marathon, you’ve already missed Adam Ellis’ epic rage over Super Meat Boy, but there’s still a whole lot of hours left.
Comments
11 responses to “Hackers Attack Operation Supply Drop Charity Drive”
Who the he’ll would want to donate money to the American military. Doesn’t their government do enough already? They are the highest funded military in the world, I’m sure they could spare some cash and buy their soldiers some games.
Dude, in the Iraq war they didn’t bother giving all of them body armour or weapons, and providing the promised services to wounded veterans is hit and miss so far. They spend the most on their defence budget in the world, that doesn’t translate to most on soldiers since a lot of that stuff goes into R&D, jets, tanks, ships, etc.
And this isn’t donating to the military, it’s donating it to soldiers. Hell would freeze over before the military would do the same as this charity.
“Operation Supply Drop, previously featured on Kotaku, is a charity organisation dedicated to providing American military personnel with video games. The idea is that video games can help soldiers deal with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.”
As the article states, this isn’t donating money to the American military. It’s donating money to a charity that helps soldiers deal with the psychological aftermath of military combat.
… And the Gamespot comment thread on this topic turns in to a massive political debate haha.
I find it really funny as most places hate america and there army. In saying that america doesn’t give a crap what happens to there army as you can see that alot of homeless people are Vets who have returned. The firearms get taken away as well. I can see why people would want to raise money for this but the fact is America should be the one paying for this not others.
That is the exact point I’m trying to make. Instead of taking donations from citizens the American government should be supporting their soldiers and providing whatever support soldiers with ptsd need.
Yes but the reality of it is that their government doesn’t help them adequately. So other (awesome & unselfish) folks out there have taken it upon themselves to try and help these returning vets, this charity drive being an example of that. It is all good and well to say that the American gov should be doing it but they aren’t, which is why these charities exist in the first place. Besides, what should we do instead of donate? Nothing at all? Should we just sook about the gov not doing their part and leave it at that? How does that help the immediate needs of these veterans?
“Who the he’ll (sic) would want to donate money to the American military.” It may not have been your intention but this sounds very cold-hearted and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding for the situation. For starters, the money isn’t donated to the military, it is donated to people who are being neglected by the military.
No I don’t Think people should stand around and do nothing. I think people need to stand up to their governments and say this shit is not on. For god sake we are the people we have the power. So many people fail to realise that and instead of banding together to fight for a greater cause we divide ourselves and fight for smaller meaningless causes. Instead of a charity drive they should have a revolution drive
Eh, I’d prefer to donate to childsplay charity events. Do not care for the military or soldiers.
Can we stop calling DDos users ‘hackers?’ There is no hacking whatsoever. Hacking implies code, time investment, and with the assumption of stealing of credit cars. DDos-ers simply take a server down.
It’s one of those buzz words fir non techy people.
“is a charity organisation dedicated to providing American military personnel with video game”
this isn’t accurate they also provide the packages to UK and even Australian troops and are also trying to work with the Canadian services as well, they talked about it on the Livestream with Roosterteeth