09-10-12 | Blog Post
Update – 2:01 PM ET: The outage was caused by an ‘internal problem,’ not a hacker. This is from a statement from Go Daddy’s website:
The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a “hack” and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.
Update – 11:02 AM ET: Go Daddy tweeted around 8:18 PM last night that they’ve made progress and most customer hosted sites are back online.
Go Daddy, one of the largest web hosts and domain name registrar, went down (this) Monday morning and is still currently experiencing downtime. While reports are scattered, the general consensus is every website with their DNS hosted at Go Daddy is inaccessible. A number of Online Tech’s clients that don’t host their DNS with us are affected. Go Daddy is currently working to resolve the issue, with no ETA.
Any domain that is registered with Go Daddy and uses its nameservers and DNS records are down, meaning even if you host your site elsewhere, if you use Go Daddy for DNS, your site is down, according to Mashable.com. While GoDaddy.com has been recently resolved, other sites appear to still be affected. Their Twitterfeed acknowledged the issue around 1:35 PM ET.
While their most recent Tweet reveals:
TechCrunch.com reports that a member of Anonymous has claimed to be behind the DDoS attack that took down their servers. AnonymousOwn3r is the Twitter handle of the hacker; the “security leader” of the group Anonymous. Read more about the hacktivism in How Could Hacktivism Affect Your Business?
Anonymous is a hacktivist group that has opposed and attacked many open supporters of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act proposed with the intent to combat Internet piracy outside of the United States. They took down websites of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Warner Music Group, BMI and Universal Music – all vocal SOPA supporters, according to InfoWorld.com. MegaUpload, a major file-sharing site, was hit by the file-sharing crackdown in February – read more in MegaUpload’s Series of Unfortunate Events.
The takedown may or may not have something to do with Go Daddy’s initial support of SOPA, which turned right around when they admitted to “seeing a ‘spike’ in domain transfers due to its SOPA support,” according to Go Daddy’s CEO, Warren Adelman, and as reported by TechCrunch.com. In a statement by Adelman, the company then decided to publicly oppose SOPA in order to “repair those relationships and win back their business over time.” Unfortunately, this recent event may result in even more domain transfers and lost business, as irate customers seek out more reliable and quality hosting providers.
This incident is also similar to the major outage that affected North America and Europe (and many Online Tech clients) back in November 2011 – Time Warner Cable experienced an Internet outage that affected multiple service providers. The downtime was a result of a router firmware problem. Read more about the event in Outage Affects North America and Europe.
Stay tuned to the OT Blog for more updates…
References:
MegaUpload Rises Again as Anonymous Knocks Out SOPA Supporters’ Sites
GoDaddy’s DNS Servers Go Down, Along With Thousands of Sites
Burned By Fleeing Customers, GoDaddy No Longer Just ‘Doesn’t Support’ But Actually “Opposes” SOPA
