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Cafepress.com's Web site knocked offline

Declan McCullagh Former Senior Writer
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
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Declan McCullagh

Cafepress.com, the popular online shop that does custom printing, has been reeling this week from a distributed denial-of-service attack.

The company told us that the attack started on Tuesday, which interfered with holiday shopping orders because orders placed until that evening at midnight were accepted for Christmas delivery.

A Cafepress.com representative told us that police have been alerted, but wouldn't provide details about what agency or whether it's an extortion attempt (basically "pay us or your site goes offline").

In a statement sent to its customers, forwarded by security firm Sophos, Cafepress.com said: "As of right now some customers have access that appears normal, some have intermittent access, and some have no access at all."