14 DAY TRIAL // Gawker and its sister websites suffered intermittent downtimes during the weekend and at the beginning of this week due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against its hosting server. An internal company memo reveals that the main target was The Consumerist.
Gawker Media is a company that maintains several successful blog-type websites, whose specific ranges from celebrity gossip, fashion and adult-oriented art to technology, gadgets, automobiles and science fiction. Starting with 2008, Gawker has sold some of its online properties, namely Idolator, Gridskipper, Wonkette and The Consumerist, to other companies.
Most of the company's remaining popular blogs, such as Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Deadspin, io9, Fleshbot, as well as Gawker.com, experienced connectivity issues over the past weekend and on Monday. In an article entitled "If You Can Read This Post, You're One of the Lucky Few," published on Aug. 3, Gawker editors announced that, "All Gawker Media sites are having really bad server problems today. It's not just you."
Early on Tuesday morning, an update was posted, clarifying that the problems were being caused by hackers. "According to a memo sent out tonight by our IT team, the recent Gawker Media server problems were the result of a DDOS attack," it read. Furthermore, it was specified that consumerist.com was the intended victim.
The Consumerist website was sold by Gawker Media to Consumer Union, which has been maintaining it since January 1st, 2009. The new owner has kept the old blog format and still uses Gawker's platform and servers to host it. The website is practically a shopping blog focused on consumer news and exposing bad experiences with various companies.
Some reports speculate that one of the recent stories posted on the blog must have really upset someone, who either paid for or launched the DDoS themselves. Such attacks involve a large number of computers simultaneously sending fake packets or requests to a server or service. In an attempt to process all of the bogus requests, the system eventually consumes all of its available resources and crashes or becomes non-responsive.
Cybercrooks who control botnets – armies of computers infected with malware – generally offer DDoS services for sale on the black market. According to security researchers, the prices practiced for launching these attacks range between $50 to several thousands of dollars, depending on the target and duration.