Operation Supply Drop's third annual 8-Bit Salute 24 hour charity game marathon went live this morning at 9 a.m. Eastern time. By 10 a.m. hackers had disabled the military gaming charity's website via DDoS attack.
Operation Supply Drop, previously featured on Kotaku, is a charity organization dedicated to providing American military personnel with video games. The idea is that video games can help soldiers deal with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
The 8-Bit Salute is an annual 24-hour gaming marathon and donation drive, held in conjunction with Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter. While the marathon itself is still going strong, the Operation Supply Drop webpage was taken down by the charity is calling an sustained, organized distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). As of this writing, the website is still down.
Judging from Twitter responses to the charity's further posts on the attack, the gaming community is largely outraged by the situation. If fact, I'm guessing more people are talking about the charity marathon now than would have been had the attacks not occurred. Thanks for the bump, hackers.
While the Operation Supply Drop website is closed for donations, folks interested in donating can do so directly through PayPal at this link here. Or they can hit the Rosster Teeth website and pick up the special event poster for $10, with all proceeds going directly to Operation Supply Drop.
As for the marathon, you've already missed Adam Ellis' epic rage over Super Meat Boy, but there's still a whole lot of hours left.