Sites Down
The real story of the GoDaddy outage: Why the Internet seems like it's broken
CultureMap was one of possibly millions of sites knocked out by a hackaffiliated with the hactivist group Anonymous.Anonymous Own3r/Twitter
A Monday Internet hack took down thousands and possibly millions of websites hosted by GoDaddy and websites that had purchased their domain names from GoDaddy but are hosted elsewhere. CultureMap was among the sites affected.
Though offline times have varied, all sites registered with the Internet provider were knocked out of commission around 1 p.m. thanks to a member of Anonymous, the hacktivist collective known for targeting major corporate entities. GoDaddy email accounts and phone services were down as well.
Using the Twitter handle Anonymous Own3r, the assailant claims to be acting alone rather that pushing a operation planned by the broader global organization. The mysterious hacker appears to be from Brazil according to various Tweets in Portuguese and rather broken English.
When its website was down, GoDaddy communicating via Twitter as well. "Sorry to hear all your frustration. We're working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible," the account read at 2 p.m. An hour later, the Arizona-based company reported that some service has been restored.
GoDaddy backed the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill in late 2011, before public pressure from major Internet players like Wikipedia and Cheezburger resulted in the company dropping its support for the legislation. A YouTube video from Anonymous (the group) claims that the sites takedown is a response to GoDaddy's supporting the U.S. government's attempts "to censor and control the Internet."
