A hacker and security activist associated with the Anonymous collective is claiming responsibility for an attack on GoDaddy.com's widely used web hosting and doman registration service that darkened a large swath of the Internet today. TechCrunch reports that customers of the service, which many will recognize from their bikini-heavy Superbowl commercial spots, have been experiencing outages with everything from hosted domains to email and phone service.
The hacker behind the takedown goes by the name of Anonymous Own3r. Despite his callsign, he is claiming sole responsibility for the hack which he says is not coming from the nebulous collective itself.
Hello everyone who wanna me to put 99% of the global Internet in #tangodown?
— Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 10, 2012
The hacker vaguely explained that he went after the domain hosting service in order to "test how cyber security is safe" and other reasons he didn't want to discuss on Twitter. GoDaddy, on the other hand, is aware of the problem, but is having a hard enough time keeping up with all the frustrated customers:
So many messages, can't get to you all... Sorry to hear all your frustration. We're working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible.
— Go Daddy (@GoDaddy) September 10, 2012
At the moment GoDaddy.com is up, but many sites hosted with the company are dark. Some service has already been restored.
