GoDaddy had an outage on Monday that lasted for close to six hours, leaving those with GoDaddy hosted websites and email out of service. It’s a huge inconvenience to business owners and those who depend on regular traffic to their websites. Page views were down across all of my sites and once my email did come back up, there were major delays and what appears to be lost messages between clients. In short, it was a major hassle for anyone who depended on GoDaddy services, which was millions of people.
Shortly after the outage, an alleged member of the hacker group Anonymous took credit for the outage. GoDaddy would later deny this hack, claiming their own mistake for the outage. It was not actually the full hacker group who was claiming to have done this deed but just one member who goes by the name “Anonymous Own3r” and says that he acted alone to prove GoDaddy’s vulnerabilities.
Anonymous Own3r says on Twitter: @godaddy how do you explain that a router can compromise services through e-mail hosting and other things? it’s time to you assume my hack — Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 13, 2012
“Anonymous Own3r” seemed very stuck on making it known that he had done this hacking but really there is no proof ether way. It’s quite possible he just wanted the fame. If it’s true, he has completed one of the largest successful hacks in history. In the days that followed, he also received many shoutouts and ‘thank yous’ via Twitter for what he had done. He followed up later with a post that GoDaddy is “government owned”:
#GoDaddy is Government Owned. | #Anonymous message about the #GoDaddy hack | bit.ly/QpaqCW
— Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 14, 2012
While some may have seen this as an act of vigilantism, there are many of us who were severely affected and don’t appreciate being made the target just so some hacker can prove a point to a company. Who are they really hurting when they do this? Continue reading Was the GoDaddy Outage Really Due to a Hacker?