Victoria's Secret's Website Has Been Down for Hours, but What's Happening With It?

Although it's no longer the dominant brand that it once was, Victoria's Secret remains a business with incredibly high name recognition. Unfortunately, it seems that the company is a little less buttoned up when it comes to its IT infrastructure, at least if you go by the security of their website.

That website, which is also an online shopping portal, has been down for more than 12 hours now, and many want to know what happened to it and why it's been down so long. Here's what we know.

If you navigate to victoriassecret.com, you'll be greeted with the following message:

"We identified an issue affecting the operation of our site. Thank you for your patience while we work to restore operations. In the meantime, you can visit your local Victoria’s Secret and PINK stores."

We don't know exactly what that issue might be, but the detectives on Reddit suspect that they were hit with some kind of malware or ransomware attack.

Although the information posted on Reddit can be difficult to fact-check, one user said that the company was dealing with a cyber attack, and even added that employees have been told not to log into the company's network for the next two days.

The company has not released any details about the attack anywhere. As a result, all we really know for sure is what they've said on the website.

Taking your website down right after Memorial Day weekend, which is when many of the year's biggest sales are, is not something any smart business would do. So the site is down almost definitely because of some sort of malicious attack, although we don't know the exact nature of the attack or whether the hackers are making specific demands or just wanted to mess with one of the world's most well-known brands.

Given the extended nature of the outage, whatever the problem is, it's one that the company is clearly struggling to come up with any sort of effective solution to. Until we know more about exactly what's happening, though, all that we can confidently say is that if Victoria's Secret could have its website up right now, it definitely would.

As more and more commerce is done online, your online shopping portal and your website have become an important line of defense for many businesses. A hacker who takes control of your website can often demand a lot to relinquish that control, and once they've gained access, it can be difficult to get them out.

Until Victoria's Secret publicly explains what's going on, we won't know what exactly is happening. It's pretty safe to say, though, that it's not good, and it's not a situation that the company can mediate quickly, or everything would be back to normal by now.