Recent events in the Guy Marriage debate had a drastic effect on websites hosted by a Christchurch hosting service provider.

An article described the following, where the New Zealand based server was not able to handle traffic and hacking attempts—which effected other websites hosted on the same server.

While the site was reinstated a couple of times on Monday, its Christchurch-based webhost had to eventually pull the site completely because hackers had overwhelmed their servers so much it affected every other website hosted by the company.

Family First’s own website was also hosted by the company and also had to be pulled, but both sites were now back up and running on international servers.

“It is disappointing that some opponents in the marriage debate are unwilling to have robust debate and are resorting to desperate – but failed – attempts to shut us down,” McCroskrie said.

“We are also disappointed that our web host company was targeted with offensive emails simply because they were a Christchurch business that we wanted to support and who were willing to host some of our websites.”

Sony has warned users against a massive bruteforce attack against PlayStation and Sony network accounts. The attack – which used password and user ID combinations from an unidentified third-party source – succeeded in compromising 60,000 PlayStation Network and 33,000 Sony Online Entertainment network accounts. These accounts have been locked and passwords reset.

The attack took place between October 7 and 10 and succeeded in matching valid sign-in IDs. According to a blog post by Philip Reitinger, Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, credit card details were not compromised.
Both the motive for the latest attack against Sony network users and the identity of the perpetrator(s) remains unclear. Sony shut down its PlayStation Network in April in the aftermath of a far more damaging hack attack. The service wasn’t restored until a month later. Personal information on 77 million account-holders was exposed as a result of the April PlayStation hack. Details including names, addresses, passwords and purchase histories was exposed by the megahack.