Edit: are they DDoSsing or donating? If the former, than it's even worse form. Had my hopes up for a second. The article talks about a failing site because of many donations, but other replies here about DDoS.
It would still be a bit sad if a cancer donation site could be brought down with so much less than 1 donation per second, but I'd use occam's razor.
Still we don't know if that brought down the server accidentally or on purpose. It's a question of intent, and their desire for publicity. Sadly, it only takes one.
> The raid is ongoing and unconfirmed sources talk about 11k donations.
I mean, the site is back up now and the raid still ongoing, but I can very well imagine the (shared?) server of a charity collapsing when suddenly even a few hundred or thousand people start clicking around on the website simultaneously.
But I guess you have to call the charity and ask them if you want exact numbers?
I'd have to know that the charity was real, that all of those clicks were real, the donations were real, and that they weren't coordinated in loading particularly heavy pages with the intent to bring it down. Cui bono from the publicity?
A side question: Who is Dr. Matthias Moench (now I really want to know) and what murder was he convicted of? that seems almost as relevant.
That none of the many savy hackers people who want publicity for their protest tried to find out how many donation pages they could have open simultaneously sounds like it would take a conspiracy. The 'raid' and its coordinated nature is almost by definition conspiracy.
The description of Dr. Moench and his conviction for murder is on the exact Krebs post being protested.
As for his background story and the crimes he committed see [1].
[1] https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article135077209/Viagra-ist-f... (use something like Google Translate if you don't understand German)
They're getting back at Krebs by donating to a charity?
They're not (intentionally) DDOSing the charity. The charity's website is simply overloaded from visitors seeking to donate.
The charity's slogan is "Cancer (Krebs) is one of the worst problems of our time". So I guess it makes sense. Somehow.
It's the sort of passive-egressive altruism that quite elegantly straddles the divide of childishness and maturity.
But yes.
And since the server crashed, they donated to other charities, as well. DKMS saw many donations, as well.