Just got an e-mail from Cafepress. Bad news for them as they've been targeted by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. I'm not familiar with that, but I do know it's been next to impossible to get on thier site for 2 days now. It's spotty at best. Here's the e-mail:
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Hello Shopkeepers,
As you may have read on the CafePress Community Forum, we're experiencing a targeted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which is causing significant service interruptions. As of right now some customers have access that appears normal, some have intermittent access, and some have no access at all. We will continue to update the CafePress Community Forum (http://forums.cafepress.com/eve) as we have more to share, and we urge you to check there for the most recent information.
A DDoS attack prevents access to a web site by its users. You can compare this to 500 people trying to enter a retail store through the same door at the exact same moment. This congestion prevents consistent and easy flow of traffic to the site. There has not been a breach of information.
A DDoS attack is a computer crime and violates Internet proper use policy as dictated by the Internet Architecture Board, and we are now working with the proper authorities. For this reason we are not able to share any additional details at this time.
More information about DDoS attacks can be found easily online with a quick Google or Wikipedia search.
We do consider this an attack on CafePress, but we're most disturbed at how this victimizes our community of Shopkeepers. If you have specific questions please contact cphelp@cafepress.com and we will get back to you as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your continued understanding,
Jill Ambrose
Chief Marketing Officer
CafePress.com
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Rambit