Feedly Repeatedly Hit By DDoS Attacks

Feedly has made itself a nice little business stepping into the hole that was left in RSS readers once Google Reader was shut down. Now Feedly is facing the consequences of being the king of the hill as it has faced numerous DDoS attacks that have taken the site down multiple times in the last couple of days.

Feedly was taken down by a distributed denial of service (DDOS) on Thursday morning, according to Forbes. Early Friday morning, Feedly was taken down by a second round of attacks that had the site offline yet again briefly, according to Mashable.

The good news for Feedly enthusiasts is that the site seems to have launched a second wave of defenses against these ongoing hacker attacks. Feedly was able to get up and running much quicker on Friday than it did on Thursday.

Feedly wasn’t the only major site that has been hit in the last couple of days. Evernote was also taken down briefly and hackers claimed they would need a ransom in order to allow the two sites to get back online.

It appears the ransoms were not paid and Feedly technicians were able to stop the DDoS attacks on their own. Evernote too has managed to offer its service yet again and it appears they also thwarted the attackers rather than paid them off.

Josh from Feedly posted on the company blog during the second attack today that all user data was safe and secure even while the DDoS attack was ongoing. While Feedly was once a free RSS reader it has since turned into a lucrative business.

Despite the fact that there are some other RSS readers out there that have moved to fill the void, Feedly has stepped up to the forefront. The company has taken advantage of its standing to start charging for services such as integration with (ironically) Evernote and other sites that help people save articles for later reading.

Feedly has still stayed away from asking for a monthly charge for its basic RSS services. That alone allows Feedly to stand out from quite a few other RSS reader services that have started charging monthly subscription dues.

Feedly has benefited greatly from being one of the first companies to step up when Google Reader stepped down. Since then, AOL Reader and Digg Reader have been launched as free services but Feedly has maintained its dominance in the marketplace.