Feminist blog Femsplain.com came under a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on International Women’s Day.
Whilst the opportunity was taken to celebrate women’s achievements and contributions to society, the blog founder Amber Gordon said that the site had suffered DDoS attacks in the past, but never with such severity as the one experienced yesterday, reported Graham Cluley on welivesecurity.
“I think it’s because it’s International Women’s Day,” she told The Verge. However Femsplain used the attack to its advantage, exploiting the story of the DDoS attack on International Women’s Day to get the attention of the media. The site has also just successfully raised over $30,000 via Kickstarter, which will go towards ensuring there is a platform where all women’s voices can be heard.
Stephanie Weagle, director of marketing at Corero, said: “DDoS attack tools are easy to come by, and even easier to use. As one can imagine, the motives for launching a DDoS attack are wide raging, with revenge, extortion, hacktivism and the like, being the primary drivers.
“As its name suggests, DDoS attacks are an effort in denying service availability, in an attempt to create maximum disruption. Unfortunately, attacks are more likely to occur at the worst possible time for your business. As the attack against popular feminist blog femsplain.com showcases, organisations both large and small, should understand that it’s only a matter of time before they suffer an attack, if they haven’t already. It appears that this particular DDoS attack was strategically orchestrated for International Women’s Day.”
