Web hosting company Moonfruit has made the decision to temporarily take down all sites it hosts following threats of a cyber-attack. The site was brought down last Thursday for a short period of time following a DDoS attack by a group calling themselves the Armada Collective. The Armada Collective have reportedly been responsible for a series of extortion attacks on organisations across the globe, asking for thousands of pounds in Bitcoin. They threatened to continue attacks on Monday in order to bring the Moonfruit website down for a more significant length of time.
Following the DDoS attack on Thursday, Moonfruit sent out emails to all of their customers informing them of the reason for the downtime and asking for their help and support to prevent the further attacks. The email asked Moonfruit customers to make some simple changes that would reroute traffic in a way that would protect the site from attacks. It was hoped that the changes outlined, as well as any backend changes Moonfruit could make, would reduce the need for any downtime. However, in a statement released this morning, Moonfruit announced that all sites would be down completely for 12 hours in order to push major updates to improve site security.
In the statement, Director Matt Casey said: “We’re genuinely sorry for the disruption this will cause, and please do bear with us. We have been working with law enforcement agencies regarding this matter and have spared no time or expense in ensuring we complete the work as quickly as possible.”
DDoS attacks are just one of the ways businesses have been targeted by cyber criminals. These attacks have been increasing in frequency over the past few years as more and more businesses find themselves relying on the internet for business.
At present, the Moonfruit website remains down for the scheduled updates.