GoDaddy server goes down, taking local sites with it

By Arielle Stevenson on Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 4:41 pm

"I don't feel alone in this unfortunate situation" Ickowitz said. "Let's all just breathe in and out. Hopefully someone will turn GoDaddy's lights back on soon. This is not cute."

Sarah Thee Campagna — owner, artist and operator at CyberCraft Robots — noticed her site, CyberCraftRobots.com, went down Monday afternoon. Local entertainment company Tampa Bay Dream Team also experienced a blackout.

Millions of sites linked to GoDaddy through hosting or domain names experienced technical difficulties. AnonymousOwn3r claimed he took down all of GoDaddy's DNS servers but hasn't stated why.

He tweeted earlier today, "@film_girl I'm taking godaddy down bacause well i'd like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now."

[
      {
        "name": "Ad - NativeInline - Injected",
        "component": "12461396",
        "insertPoint": "3",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "5"
      },{
        "name": "Real 1 Player (r2) - Inline",
        "component": "12436357",
        "insertPoint": "2/3",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "9"
      }
    ]

click to enlarge

TWITTER.COM

GoDaddy server goes down, taking local sites with it

click to enlarge

TWITTER.COM

GoDaddy server goes down, taking local sites with it

TWITTER.COM

Monday morning, mega-domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy went dark. Hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for the attack, but not collectively. The "security leader" at Anonymous (Twitter user name @AnonymousOwn3r) took sole responsibility.

Anonymous Federation (‏@AnonFederation) tweeted, "Please redirect your #godaddy hate to @AnonymousOwn3r He is the 'leader' of #Anonymous and a #faggot. #derp Have #lulz with that."

Sites hosted by GoDaddy weren't the only target: Any domain registered with the site that uses name servers or DNS records also went down. This included several local business owners. Leslie Joy Ickowitz, publisher and creative director of Vertical Tampa Bay, found out what was going on with GoDaddy through a friend's Facebook post. She soon learned that her site, VerticalTampaBay.com, had been affected.