Hacker Holds Meetup.com Hostage — for $300?

Meetup has been hit by a DDoS attack that may be linked to an email-based extortion demand demanding $300 to spare the company from being hacked.

Scott Heiferman, cofounder and CEO of Meetup, wrote on the company’s blog that the attack occurred on Thursday; the site has been down several times since then. Heiferman wrote that this was the first such attack in the company’s 12-year history:

Here’s what happened. On Thursday morning, I received this email:

Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:26 AM
Subject: DDoS attack, warning

A competitor asked me to perform a DDoS attack on your website. I can stop the attack for $300 USD. Let me know if you are interested in my offer.

Simultaneously, the attack began, our servers were overwhelmed with traffic, and our services went down. Read more…

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