iMakr Hacked!

While perusing 3D print sites today, I noticed that iMakr’s site has been hacked!

As per the above Google search result, you can see that “G_M-Black” has claimed the hack, which has disabled the site entirely. If you attempt to go their home page, it doesn’t work.

If you’re not familiar with iMakr, it was one of the very first retail 3D print store operations, first opening a small shop in London, which we visited in 2013.

At the time the store focused on consumer 3D printing activities, since that was the buzz in 2013. They hoped to capitalize on the predicted consumer boom by offering an ability for the public to come in and see 3D printers in action, much like you would do for devices at an Apple store.

3D Print Retail Store

Once there were rumors they were about to open as many as 40 stores worldwide. But that definitely did not happen.

For a time this approach worked, and I remember fondly seeing passers-by in London stop to peer in the store windows staring at the then-mysterious devices.

But things changed. The consumer boom collapsed, and all 3D printing operations had to pivot to survive. iMakr did so successfully by shifting their product line to professional equipment used by architects, designers and engineers on their desktops. Since then iMakr has been able to continue operations at their London shop as well as their second location in NYC.

Today their site is hacked, and we don’t know why. It could be that the site is being held for ransom, or perhaps it was a random takeover with the intention of redirecting traffic to another site for nefarious purposes.

No Mention From iMakr

As of this writing, we see no mention from iMakr on their social channels, so it is a bit curious. Could it be they are out of business? We can’t tell as we can’t walk down and check out their stores, but perhaps some readers in London or NYC could take a look for us?

[MAJOR UPDATE] We have just been contacted directly by iMakr management, who inform us that in fact they have been undergoing an extremely serious hacker attack for reasons unknown today. Apparently they’ve been battling against their foes for some time and briefly managed to get their site up, but then lost it again due to ongoing attacks. They expect to restore site functionality as soon as possible, but they’re unsure how long the battle will last. One thing they definitely wanted to make very clear: they are NOT going out of business, and in fact have been doing quite well recently.

[SECOND UPDATE] As of Tuesday morning, it seems that the iMakr.com site is back in action after a lengthy outage. We will attempt to determine the details of the unfortunate event from iMakr and report back in the near future.

It’s quite possible that the site will have been restored by the time you read this post, if iMakr is able to do so. If that’s the case, it’s a lesson for all 3D print companies to keep their site secure from invaders who can cause all kinds of problems.

Via iMakr