Moonfruit takes Websites Offline after Cyber-Attack Threat

Cyber attacks have been increased rapidly throughout the globe. Sony was hacked just a few months which caused leakage of emails, movies details and other. Snapchat has also been hit in the past and now every website is playing cautious when it comes to imminent cyber attacks. Recently Moonfruit took thousands of its hosted business and personal websites offline after being threatened by a cyber-attack.

What is Moonfruit and why it took websites offline? 

Moonfruit is a UK company which helps its consumers and small business to create websites and online stores. Moonfruit is highly popular among the users in UK for its affordable pricing and efficient website builder which makes it simpler and easier to create demanding websites with less coding. Moonfruit has taken thousand of its customer’s website offline after receiving threats about a cyber attack.

Moonfruit had stated that it has kept thousands of its customer websites offline for up to 12 hours in order to make necessary changes in its infrastructure and to safeguard its consumers. Moonfruit has also perceived problems last Thursday when it suffered from a 45 minute of distributed denial-of-service attack. In this attack Moonfruit computer were overwhelmed by unwanted traffic and it made the use of its legitimate services non-functional.

Moonfruit consumers suffers from being offline

Moonfruit has informed its consumers about the decision of taking down the websites for up to 12 hours from Monday and it has generated some angst among the consumers. One such consumer Reece de Ville, a filmmaker, has complained that Moonfruit has been slow in communicating this decision which has the potential to disrupt the website performance and reach.

Moonfruits users had complained that this is bad time for taking down the websites as the holiday season is in full swings which brings higher web traffic and increases the sales volume. Apart from losing money through sales another problem faced by the users is the loss of potential clients or new clients within a day. Online stores will sells items especially for the holiday season like gifts and greeting cards store will take a severe hit in this Christmas week.

Armanda Collective behind the cyber attack threat

Moonfruit has sent emails to its customers where it explained that a notorious cyber hack group called Armanda Collective is attempting to extort money out of the company. Armanda Collective had previously successfully attacked the websites of web mail companies which included Hushmail, ProtonMail, RunBox and quite a number of Greek banking institutions.

The customers have been furious and quite unhappy with the loss of sales and potential clients. But it should also be understood that Moonfruit is a victim too of unpleasant criminal act where cyber criminals are threatening its business for extorting money. Moonfruit is working with the law enforcement authorities regarding this matter and hopes to dissolve this threat at the earliest. In the mean time customers have to bear with the Moonfruit decision of keeping the hosted websites offline.