It was a tense morning, but Crunchyroll’s back!
At 12:32PM, Crunchyroll announced that their service is officially back online. The app and main site are back and in full operation.
We've just gotten the all-clear to say that https://t.co/x1dBCM9X9C is back online!! Thank you SO MUCH for your patience ~ ❤️ pic.twitter.com/FQRRHowvp6
— Crunchyroll (@Crunchyroll) November 4, 2017
The news comes hot on the heels of this morning’s events, which saw the world’s biggest anime service slammed by a cyber attack. Specifically, the site was hit by a domain hijacking attack, which sees an attacker taking control of a domain, thus allowing them to redirect users to a potentially malicious website.
As of 8:00AM Eastern, the site was 8:00AM Eastern (5:00AM Pacific) redirecting users to a site based in the Netherlands. The front page claimed that Crunchyroll is using “A New Media Player” (complete with grammatical errors), and encouraging the download of malicious application “CrunchyViewer.exe”.
Crunchyroll’s German account were the first to raise the alarm for users. According to their account, the American social media managers “weren’t awake” at the time.
Our American Social Media colleagues aren't awake at the moment (it's 5 AM there)
— Crunchyroll.de✨ (@Crunchyroll_de) November 4, 2017
This is the latest in a string of hacks targeting anime websites. In August, Anime News Network was taken down in a similar domain name hjacking attack. In September, we at Anime Herald were taken out by vandals.
We’ve reached out to Crunchyroll for a comment on the matter, and will update once we receive word.
Source: Crunchyroll (Twitter)
