Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
A hacker from the shadowy group Anonymous is claiming to have taken down the domain registry and web hosting company GoDaddy.com today, bringing down thousands of Web sites for small businesses and blogs who were likely not intentional targets.
The hacker known as AnonymousOwn3r on Twitter has made a point to mention several times that he or she acted alone in the hack-attack and is not working on behalf of the larger Anonymous collective.
GoDaddy.com is the largest domain registrar on the web today. Their administrators have admitted that they had been suffering technical issues, and now many GoDaddy users are complaining that their hosted email accounts are down as are any sites that use GoDaddy´s DNS service.
Twitter is already abuzz with speculations about the hack-in, although AnonymousOw3r has already asked various websites and tech blogs (such as Tech Crunch) to point out the fact that they are acting alone. Speaking to someone with the Twitter handle @Film_Girl, AnonymousOwn3r briefly attempted to explain their motives, saying only: “I´m taking go daddy down bacause well I’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now.” (Misspellings in original quote)
Later, AnonymousOwn3r claimed to have taken down a whole block of DNS servers, making the statement that, “It´s not so complex.”
“When I do some DDOS attack I like to let it down by many days, the attack for unlimited time it can last one hour or one month.”
Before the attack took place, the hacker (who claims to be from Brazil) sent out the message “Hello everyone who wanna me to put 99% of the global Internet in #tangodown?”
In response to the attack, GoDaddy has sent out the following message on Twitter, “We’re aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We’re working on it.”
A quick look at GoDaddy´s Twitter channel shows just how many people and how many different kinds of businesses are being affected by this hacker´s seemingly random decision to attack the large web-based company today. Numerous blogs and small businesses who use GoDaddy´s web services have also been taken down by the hacker´s attack.
GoDaddy hasn´t always been the most popular web service around, however. Earlier this year, GoDaddy said they´d be supporting the controversial SOPA act which would have given the government unprecedented abilities to censor Internet content. Following massive protests and a mass exodus from the site, GoDaddy decided to change their position on the SOPA legislation. The damage had already been done, however, and the web hosting company´s reputation was severely tarnished. In all, more than 37,000 domains pulled their sites from GoDaddy.com in response to their support of SOPA.
“The fleeing domains come as a result of the intense backlash from customers and Internet critics after GoDaddy appeared on an official list of companies supporting SOPA,” said Tom Cheredar of VentureBeat. “The internet responded by staging a wide-spread boycott where people would switch their domains to another registrar, which GoDaddy initially dismissed as having little impact on their business.”
Though they´re not the most beloved web entity, many rely on them to conduct their business, and this attack could be costly to many innocent business owners.
Later, Anonymousown3r Tweeted, “I´m no anti go daddy, you guys will understand because I did this attack.”
We shall see.
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