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Good evening. Crawford Gibbs was hit
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with a cyber attack that brought the
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online giving site down on its very
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Reporter Nicole Lee joins us now in the
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studio with the very latest on the
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Well, Sean and Jen, fortunately,
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organizers say the site is back up and
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they're assuring donors that their data
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I think that's what somebody wants is to
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is to kind of like put a a wrench in in
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the charitable giving. and um I don't
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know who the Grinch is.
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The cyber attack on Crawford Gives
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started Tuesday at 4 in the afternoon,
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causing the site to crash for 2 hours.
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The executive director of the Crawford
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Heritage Community Foundation says it
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was a denial of service attack, which
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happens when bad players flood the
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website with traffic.
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The server cannot keep up with all these
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requests and it kind of slows down and
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crashes. In response, the Crawford give
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site was rebooted several times. When
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the site continued to go down
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sporadically, a more timeconsuming
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Kind of what has had to happen is they
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uh ban certain IP addresses that send
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repeated requests to their servers. The
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site is now back up to 95% capacity,
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enabling charitable area residents to
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again give online. Mars says the good
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news is there's been no breach of donors
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Our credit card processing actually
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doesn't go through the site itself. It
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goes through our third third party
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credit card processor. Um so there's
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nothing there there for someone to steal
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if they you know have this distraction
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tactic going on. Mercyhurst University
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cyber expert says the public shouldn't
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be afraid to give online, but they
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should also do it through a secure
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browser and use a credit card rather
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than a debit card. Crawford gives
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organizers hope potential donors won't
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be scared off since 179 Crawford County
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charities are counting on them.
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Donors can head to crawford gives.org
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and make up for lost time with an online
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donation. Checks and phone in donations
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are also accepted. Jen Nicole Lee
