A two-man "natural health" website claims to be the victim of a DDoS and hacking attack after it mounted an attack on a scientific paper outlining the health benefits – or lack of same – of organic foods.

At the start of the week scientists at Stanford University published a peer-reviewed study suggesting that organic foods contain about the same nutritional value as non-organic foods, and are not necessarily safer. In response, "health activist and researcher" Anthony Gucciardi, co-founder of the website Nation of Change, wrote a post on his website criticising the Stanford boffins' study – and then claimed that his site was hit almost immediately by a DDoS attack that took down its servers.

Such attacks aren't uncommon these days, since any script kiddy can download free code to stage a DDoS with very little resources. But Gucciardi says the attack was followed up by a hacker that got into their servers and tried to delete the article itself.

Gucciardi claims to have experienced a similar attack last year which also tried to remove a post from his site. That piece, entitled "Hungary Destroys all Monsanto GMO Corn Fields", was apparently briefly removed by unknown hackers.

"The attacks show nothing more than the fact that organizations with serious vested interest in deception and fortified corruption are desperately clinging on to any shred of credibility that they have left," wrote Gucciardi. "By the way, we cannot confirm at the time who issued the attacks. What we can say, however, is that it is an organization with large scale capability."

The website is now back online. El Reg contacted Nature of Change for additional information and comment, but received no response in time for publication. ®