Sadly, the Epilepsy Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the lives of 3 million Americans who suffer from epilepsy, had their online community hacked over the weekend. It appears the attack generated hundreds, if not thousands, of new posts to the community, resulting in basically a denial of service (DOS) attack. A denial of service attack is exactly what it sounds — the attackers do something to the service to make it unusable for the rest of the world.

If you’re a member of the Epilepsy Foundation eCommunities, I highly suggest not visiting the community until you see an update either here in this blog post, or in our own NeuroTalk Epilepsy support community (which is safe and secure). I visited the site and made the unfortunate mistake of clicking on one of the posts. It took control of my browser (luckily, I use Firefox, so the control was short-lived), redirected me to another site of pornographic images, and tried doing a lot more before I shut the browser down.

Out of all the places to focus an attack, I’m saddened by the attacker’s lack of ethics or regard for people’s health and well being in dealing with this serious health condition. What a way to wake up on Easter morning…

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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Epilepsy Foundation eCommunities Hacked (3/23/2008)

Epilepsy Foundation eCommunities Hacked · Buwin Technology (3/23/2008)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 23 Mar 2008
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