Go Daddy, Internet domain registrar and web hosting company for over 45 million domain names, has been brought down by a malicious flood of network traffic or Denial of Service attack. A self-proclaimed member of the hacktivist group Anonymous took responsibility for shutting down GoDaddy along with all GoDaddy serviced websites.
On Twitter (@AnonymousOwn3r), a hacker identifying himself as the Security leader of Anonymous claimed responsibility shortly after the attack on Twitter said he hacked GoDaddy because: “I’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that I can not talk now.”
Some people are complaining to AnonymousOwn3r that music websites that anti-SOPA hackers are trying protect, have been shut down by the incident.
GoDaddy’s servers were offline and there is report that all websites registered through Go Daddy were down temporarily. At about 3:40 p.m. CDT many sites were back up. However domains that are forwarded were still not working until about 4:25 p.m. Some domain names are forwarded into other websites. Apparently the servers that perform forwarding at Go Daddy remained disrupted Monday afternoon.
Among major sites known to have been affected are CNET,
Go Daddy had minimal communication on their status via Facebook and Twitter.
Two Facebook messages from Go Daddy …
Update: Still working on it, but we’re making progress. Some service has already been restored. Stick with us.
So many messages, can’t get to you all… Sorry to hear all your frustration. We’re working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible.
From Twitter (twitter.com/GoDaddy) …
@mrmalibu We appreciate the support and hope to have all resolved soon. ^Cj
— Go Daddy (@GoDaddy) September 10, 2012
Some status update message via GO DADDY’S twitter account …
1:08 PM – 10 Sep 12 We appreciate the support and hope to have all resolved soon.
We would love to offer an ETA. Right now we are doing all we can to resolve as quickly as possible.
On December 25, 2011 (Christmas Day), Go Daddy lost a net 16,191 domains as a result of the SOPA ( the US Stop Online Piracy Act) boycott. However, on December 29 (the day of the proposed boycott), Go Daddy gained a net of 20,748 domains, twice as many as it lost that day.
On December 26, 2011, a Google bomb was started against Go Daddy to remove them from the #1 place on Google for the term “Domain Registration” in retaliation for supporting SOPA. This was then disseminated through Hacker News.
In March 2012 Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stayed true to his word and transferred the popular online encyclopedia’s domain registry away from Go Daddy because of Go Daddy’s support of SOPA.
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