Meetup site down after hacker sought to extort $300 from CEO

There's been a lot of DDOS's over the past week or so. Amongst others, here's just a quick sampling

http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/from-our-ceo-abou... http://status.mailchimp.com/messages http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/namecheap-ddos/ http://mashable.com/2014/02/26/bitly-ddos-attack/

Who asks a website with a global Alexa rank of 334 for a mere $300 in DDoS protection money? http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/meetup.com

Kept looking for a suffix following that figure that might have been lost in the title.

Nope. This is hilarious.

Wonder who the competitor is that wanted the site taken down?

There is likely no competitor. Sounds like a lie to cover up the fact that the attacker is a teenager. $300 is chump change to a real criminal, but likely seems like a fortune to a younger person.