Go Daddy "Hacked" Millions of site's go down

NEW YORK: Thousands and possibly millions of websites hosted by GoDaddy.com went down for several hours on Monday, causing trouble for the mainly small businesses that rely on the service.

The Hacker called AnonymousOwn3r said: “I’m taking godaddy down bacause (sic) well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now,” that person wrote in response to questions from a

technology reporter at tech blog Mashable.

GoDaddy.com hosts more than 5 million websites, mostly for small businesses. Websites that were complaining on Twitter about outages included MixForSale.com, which sells accessories with Japanese animation themes, and YouWatch.org, a video-sharing site.

Catherine Grison, an interior designer in San Francisco who operates the site YourFrenchAccent.com, said she had to stop sending emails with her website link in them while the outage was ongoing. The site is where she displays her portfolio of work.

“Status Alert: Hey, all. We’re aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We’re working on it,” GoDaddy said.

“It is not just your site,” one apparent client wrote in response to that message. “It is EVERYTHING anyone has hosted with you…. from email to websites….”

GoDaddy also apologized to its customers.

“So many messages, can’t get to you all… Sorry to hear all your frustration,” the company said on Twitter. “We’re working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible.”

The company’s website appeared to be working as of 3:15 p.m. ET on Monday. It was unclear whether the outage as a whole had been resolved by that time.