Meduza’s crowdfunding website restored in full, following hacker attack

Meduza has restored direct payments through our support.meduza.io platform. We temporarily disabled new donations via bank cards earlier in the day on May 5, after unknown hackers attacked our crowdfunding website. 

In an apparent attempt to damage the crowdfunding campaign Meduza launched after the Russian authorities designated us as a “foreign agent” media outlet, the hackers tried to make hundreds of payments to Meduza using stolen bank account numbers. Schemes like this cause the receiving party (in this case, Meduza), to lose money on mandatory refunds (due to commission fees), and leave support services “drowning” in complaints from victims.

The electronic payment service “Stripe,” which processes donations to Meduza, blocked most of these transfers. To protect ourselves against future attacks, Meduza (via the Stripe payment service) has tightened verifications for the cards used to make donations. We have also issued refunds independently for all payments that we consider incorrect. 

If you already donated money to Meduza, you have our heartfelt thanks and our assurances that your data are perfectly safe. If you have any questions or if your debit or credit card was charged a payment to Meduza without your knowledge, please contact us at [email protected].