"Regarding the attack on the site and the associated ransom demand, I'm happy to report that I did not pay a penny of the $50,000 that the perpetrators of this technological atrocity were after. I'm also happy to report the site is back online thanks to the great work of my hosting company, Sitelutions, and DDoS-prevention technology ProxyShield® provided courtesy of Gigeservers / DDoSprotection.com. Thanks guys, I appreciate your hard work in getting The Million Dollar Homepage back up and running again, after almost 6 days offline.

One more technical point: although the site is online again and seems to be operating fine, my host Sitelutions are still looking at various options to strengthen and guard the site for the long-term. All in all though, we're confident the site is now safe from this particular attack and all future attacks of this kind. Thanks though to all the different tech companies who have e-mailed offering their help and support, we'll be in touch if needs be. It is really nice that everyone has been so supportive.

On the legal side of things, I can confirm that the FBI are investigating the attack, and that is because my site is hosted on servers in the USA, where my hosting company, Sitelutions, are based. I'm also liasing with my local division of the National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) here in the UK. My fingers are crossed we catch those responsible for the site attack / blackmail, but I'm aware it can be very difficult to track these types of people down, because they know how to cover their [digital] tracks.

A side effect of this attack has been loads of new press coverage, eg. Financial Times, BBC, Forbes, MSNBC, ZDNet, ABC News, plus much more. This has meant over 350,000 people have visited the site today alone, and tomorrow (Thursday) will likely be even busier. Perhaps the attackers have inadvertantly done me a favour! That'll teach them." [Via milliondollarhomepage.com]