“The Million Dollar Homepage” held for ransom by cyber terrorists
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
According to a report by The Financial Times, one of the quirkiest and most beloved sites on the internet is being held hostage by a Russian hacker demanding $50,000. The FBI is investigating the DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against The Million Dollar Homepage.
An e-mail demanding $50,000 from Million dollar Homepgae creator Alex Tew read, “”Hello u website is under us atack to stop the DDoS send us 50000$.”
While the e-mail sounds more like it was written by Ali G than a Russian cyber terrorist, this is no laughing matter. The Million dollar Homepage’s simple concept was it would sell each of 1-million pixels on its site to advertisers for a dollar per pixel. Buyers could buy a block as small as a 10-pixel x10-pixel square for $100, or go as large as they wanted. Last Wednesday Tew sold the remaining ad space on eBay, and reached his goal of 1-million dollars.
Tew first received a threat on January 7th, for only $5000, but dismissed it as a joke. As of this posting the site is still down.
Dear Blogger,
we’d like to invite you to visit our Homepage!
Have a quick look, you’ll see it’s a laugh! 🙂
greets Jenni and Martin from http://www.BillionLetterHomepage.com