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Update on the DDoS Attacks on DonorDrive and its Impact on Extra Life

Extra Life’s fundraising portal and platform DonorDrive was DDoS cyber-attacked on November 2, 2019. Here is what happened and what DonorDrive is doing to fix any lingering issues.

What is a DDoS?

DDoS is short for distributed denial of service, with the intention of the attack to temporarily or indefinitely disrupt service on a website. What that meant for donors and Extra Life participants is their fundraising pages and donation forms became unavailable for most of Saturday, November 2, one of Extra Life’s key fundraising days. While DDoS attacks interfere with a website’s functionally, they do not cause security breaches. Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals along with DonorDrive have no indication that any data was compromised.

Issues this may have caused:

Donors visiting and donating to participants on extra-life.org on Saturday, November 2, may have been charged multiple times if the donor initiated a sequential donation after first receiving an error on our site during the time our fundraising portal, DonorDrive, was experiencing issues.

What is being done to fix this?

DonorDrive is working to identify duplicate donations and has begun refunding those identified charges. Those refunds should be completed in the next few days, with most DonorDrive identified duplicate donations issued and refunded in the next week. Thank you for your patience. DonorDrive also is working on syncing those donations with participant fundraising pages. If you have any immediate concerns, please contact us at support@extra-life.org or 801-214-7400.

Donors affected and participations will hear from us again when DonorDrive has issued all refunds for transactions they have identified, and all funds have been allocated to participant pages. Unfortunately, due to the DDoS attack, we don’t have the data to show us whether your donor selected to be “anonymous” or not. To err on the side of caution, all donations that were submitted during this timeframe that are being posted to participant pages are labeled as “anonymous.” If you are one of those donors, please reach out directly to the person you supported if you want them to know that the donation came from you. Participants, please note fundraising thermometers may decrease if a donor requests a refund. Participants will not receive notification that a donor received a refund.

DonorDrive is currently showing that all systems are operational. They are continuing to monitor site activity and working hard on resolving issues as a result of the DDoS.

Update November 5, 2019:

Donations made during the DDoS have started to be applied to participant pages. Note: participant thermometers might take some time to update with the new amounts.

Participants will see these donations marked as anonymous as we don’t know which donors selected that preference or not. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Donors will receive a trigger notification informing them that their donation has been made to the participant page.

On behalf of the entire Extra Life and Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals team, we thank you for your patience and your contributions made #ForTheKids.