milliondollarhomepage.com hijacked

21–year–old Alex Tew created arguably the most brilliantly innovative website of 2005 (at least it's the only one that I know of to be the subject of an admiring editorial [last Saturday] in the Financial Times).

According to James Fontanella, writing in today's Financial Times, "Tew was sent a demand for $50,000 by email by a hacker, believed to be Russian, and when he refused to pay, the website crashed."

"The transcript of the email, which was made exclusively [not this part!] available to the Financial Times, said in very poor English: 'Hello u website is under us atack to stop the DDos send us 50000$,'" wrote Fontanella.

The online edition of the Financial Times carries the headline under the paper's logo above; that in the U.S. print edition reads, "FBI to look into website ransom demand."

The story, which follows in full, is identical in both versions.

Hackers blackmail milliondollar site

The FBI is investigating the hijacking of milliondollarhomepage.com - the website that earned $1m (£566,000) for its British creator Alex Tew by hosting micro-advertisements - by hackers who demanded a ransom to restore the site.

Mr Tew was sent a demand for $50,000 by e-mail by a hacker, believed to be Russian.

When he refused, the website crashed.

The e-mail, which was made available exclusively to the Financial Times, read: "Hello u website is under us atack to stop the DDoS send us 50000$."

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant, said: "DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a common way to block internet users accessing a site by flooding the website with traffic.

"In August 2005 a US teenager was sentenced to five years juvenile detention for launching DDoS attacks against online sportswear retailers costing the company over $1.5m."

Several gambling websites, as well as companies such as Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo and CNN have also been victims of such attacks.

Mr Tew first received a threat on January 7 from a body calling itself The Dark Group, demanding $5,000.

He thought the blackmail was a hoax and took little notice.

However, on Friday, Russell Weiss, president of InfoRelay,the internet server of milliondollarhomepage.com, told Mr Tew that the website was experiencing very high traffic and there was a risk that it could break down.

On Wednesday when Mr Tew sold the final 1000 pixels on his site for $38,100 on Ebay, reaching his goal of earning $1m, the hackers intensified their attack and hijacked the website.

The website should be up and running today after InfoRelay upgraded the security system.

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My visit to milliondollarhomepage.com 30 seconds ago found that, contrary to the optimistic final sentence in the Financial Times story, the site (pictured below

as it appeared on October 27, 2005) remains down.

At least Tew got his money out before they crashed it.

I'm reminded of legendary stock picker Bernard Baruch's reply when he was asked the secret of success in the market: "I always sold too soon."

Think about it.