Bob CollinsWe suspect we’re talking to nobody at the moment because one of the major ways people read NewsCut is being held hostage.
Feedly, the news reader that seemed to be the reader of choice when Google pulled the plug on Google Reader last year, was taken down today by hackers who are demanding money to restore it.
“We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can,” Feedly’s CEO, Edwin Khodabakchian, said on a blog post this afternoon.
The Denial of Service attacks are fairly common, but it’s unusual for companies to be so forthcoming acknowledging ransom demands.
“I must admit I admire Feedly’s attitude,” Graham Clulely, a computer security blogger, writes. “It’s right not to give in to the blackmailers who are essentially running an extortion racket, demanding that the cloud service pay up or be taken offline with their DDoS attack. The danger of paying DDoS blackmailers is that you’re only encouraging them to attack you more, perhaps increasing their financial demands next time.”
Is there a chance any sensitive data is being stolen?
“Assuming the hackers are only trying to bring the site down by overloading it with traffic, data will likely not be stolen,” A CNET post says. “If, however, the hackers are working to access servers, it might not be long before we’re asked to change our passwords once again. It’s a common refrain as of late, amid an increasingly insecure global environment.”
