Extra Life DDoS Attack: Children's Charity Extra Life Website Hit By DDoS During Annual Gaming Marathon

Extra Life -- a charity organization dedicated helping Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals through an annual gaming marathon -- has been hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

According to Escapist Magazine, Extra Life raises money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by taking pledges and then playing games -- anything from video games to board games and tabletop miniatures -- for 25 hours straight.

Extra Life was in the middle of this year’s event, which began at 8 a.m. today and ends at 8 a.m. on November 3, when their website suddenly went down. As a result, pledges could not be taken.

News of the DDoS attack was confirmed with a statement on the Extra Life Facebook page by founder Jeromy “Doc” Adams:

“We’ve discovered that the Extra Life website experienced a DDoS attack against our datacenter,” the statement reads. “I am not sure what kind of person would DDoS a charitable initiative. I am so sorry that you are going through this frustration today. Our entire team is purely heartbroken that someone would do this. But it has happened. As frustrating as this is for everyone involved, it pales in comparison to what the kids we’re trying to save go through. That reality, for me personally, is about the only thing keeping me somewhat calm right now.

“I am very angry and very sorry,” the statement continues. “You deserve better than this. The kids deserve better than this. Extra Life has given a lot of us some of the happiest moments in our lives. This is not one of those moments. Please hang with us through this. It is important that we spread the word. Please get on every form of social media you can and tell your friends what happened. We can overcome this together.”

After a few of hours of downtime, the Extra Life website was back online. Many took to Facebook to vent their outrage that hackers would choose to DDoS a charity organization.

“I understand DDoS'ing a website of a corrupt business or government, but...Why would someone DDoS this?” one user wrote.

“May whoever did this lose their shoes and have every child in their neighborhood strew Legos in their path forever,” another user commented.

A DDoS attack takes place when hackers use an army of infected computers to send traffic to a server, causing a shutdown in the process.