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Milliondollar Web Hijack
A website set up by a UK student to help pay off his debts has become the victim of a cyberspace attack.
Million Dollar Homepage became a huge success for Alex Tew after he sold off individual pixels as advertising space.
However, the publicity surrounding Mr Tew's success led to him becoming the victim of ransom demands, with threats that his site would be attacked if he did not pay $50,000 (£28,000).
The FBI is reported to be investigating the web attack which started with an anonymous email trying to blackmail the 21-year-old.
The Financial Times reports the message read: "Hello u website is under us attack to stop the DDoS send us 50000$."
The aspiring entrepreneur did not respond to the threat and one day after the deadline expired, his site went down.
The crash is believed to have been caused by a large denial-of-service attack, a way of blocking access to a site by flooding it with traffic.
The site is now running again after its security system was upgraded.
Mr Tew recently sold his last pixel of advertising space to reach his goal of $1m (£565,000).
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