Godaddy offline. Anonymous brings them down?

[GroobySteven]

(CBS News) GoDaddy, the domain registrar and Web hosting company, is down, perhaps taking millions of websites down as a result. "Status Alert: Hey, all. We're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it," @GoDaddy tweeted Monday.
A quick call to the company's customer service line resulted in this voice message:
"If you are having a problem with your email, we are aware of the problem."
TechCrunch reports that GoDaddy email addresses are down, as well. The blog suggests customers concerned with that their site has been affected can check online status at Down For Everyone Or Just Me.
Twitter accounts claiming to be associated with the hacking group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attack.
"Basically, every GoDaddy site on the planet just crashed," @TibitXimer tweeted.
"#TangoDown - godaddy.com," @AnonOpsLegion tweeted Monday, claiming that the Twitter account @AnonymousOwn3r was responsible for the breach. "TangoDown" is the term that Anonymous generally uses to signify that a website is down.

"By using / supporting Godaddy, you are supporting censorship of the Internet," @AnonOpsLegion tweeted again later.

GoDaddy was the target of protests after it was discovered that the company supported unpopular bills the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
GoDaddy did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.

[GrimFusion]

Good. I've always been against GoDaddy's no-warning, no-evidence account closure policies. Unfortunately, I know way too many people who use GoDaddy for domain registration just because it's highly advertised and cheap. If Anonymous is behind these attacks, I'd be kind of miffed about it. It's bad enough that GoDaddy censors it's clients over the smallest of accused copyright infractions, but making victims out of a slew of webmasters with completely legit content is a bit worse.

[bimale69]

I didnt know go daddy was still around much.

[WendyWilliams]

So that explains alot of sites down today.

[GroobySteven]

I didnt know go daddy was still around much.

I don't know why you'd think that. They're one of the biggest domain name companies.

[Wendy Summers]

I don't know why you'd think that. They're one of the biggest domain name companies.

So they're the Grooby of domain names?

[MdR Dave]

The only thing i miss so far is textsfromdog.com.

That $hit's funny.

[TempestTS]

The attack appears to have been focused on the GoDaddy DNS / Name servers, this would result in the domains that use those servers as the Authoritative Name servers being unable to be properly located on the net and "unreachable" without the web servers actually being down. A very effective way to take down a large amount of websites without having to target each individual web server although GoDaddy has a very robust DNS Server fail over system it could in theory be taken down by a flooding attack by sufficient attackers.

Attacks of this type are often done without an actual system "HACK" but rather with a flooding attack using various server load testing tools, most infamously the LOIC or LOW ORBIT ION CANNON in a group effort.

Despite some twitter accounts claiming to be associated with Anonymous this could easily be the work of other groups wanting to redirect blame towards the HacKtavist group. All in all this feels oddly timed to be the work of Anonymous and I have heard no rumblings from the underground prior to the TangoDown announcement. Anonymous also has historically avoided collateral damage preferring to go after the primary target only where in this case thousands if not millions of innocent websites would have been affected.

My hunch - Non Anon

[GrimFusion]

The attack appears to have been focused on the GoDaddy DNS / Name servers, this would result in the domains that use those servers as the Authoritative Name servers being unable to be properly located on the net and "unreachable" without the web servers actually being down. A very effective way to take down a large amount of websites without having to target each individual web server although GoDaddy has a very robust DNS Server fail over system it could in theory be taken down by a flooding attack by sufficient attackers.

Attacks of this type are often done without an actual system "HACK" but rather with a flooding attack using various server load testing tools, most infamously the LOIC or LOW ORBIT ION CANNON in a group effort.

Despite some twitter accounts claiming to be associated with Anonymous this could easily be the work of other groups wanting to redirect blame towards the HacKtavist group. All in all this feels oddly timed to be the work of Anonymous and I have heard no rumblings from the underground prior to the TangoDown announcement. Anonymous also has historically avoided collateral damage preferring to go after the primary target only where in this case thousands if not millions of innocent websites would have been affected.

My hunch - Non Anon

You make it sound all fancy and technical. It's just a DDOS attack (distributed denial of service). Any script-kiddie with a copy of LOIC and two brain cells to rub together can do it. Tempest, I'm sure you know what a DDOS attack is, but I may as well spell it out for everybody else.

Extremely oversimplified explanation of a DDOS attack:
The internet works utilizing data packets. Think of them like letters. These data packets get sent to and from a server... kind of like letters to and from the post office. Normally when a packet is sent to the server, it has some kind of data in it. It can be data for the server to read, or a data request from the server. Think about that like a letter with a question in it. A DDOS attack works by sending thousands of letters with questions in them all at once. Whoever is supposed to get those letters can't answer those questions fast enough or send the mail back so they just give up. From that point on, it doesn't matter if that server gets more data packets from genuine users surfing the web because it's already stopped doing it's job.

Anonymous gathers a crap-ton of script-kiddies and has them all attack a specific domain or IP at once, but something smells super fishy. No public warnings. No set date of attack. No expressed reason for attack. Anonymous usually goes out of their way to make their attacks publicly known and they try to avoid casualties.

This attack didn't even attempt to avoid casualties. Attacking the DNS servers directly caused hundreds of thousands of domains to essentially "deregister". In other words, it didn't down any websites, but the only way they could have been reached is by an external IP address.

Anonymous did express a dislike of GoDaddy's hosting account policies a long while back, but attacking their DNS server doesn't do a damn thing to any of the sites GoDaddy actually hosts.

[TempestTS]

You make it sound all fancy and technical. It's just a DDOS attack (distributed denial of service). Any script-kiddie with a copy of LOIC and two brain cells to rub together can do it. Tempest, I'm sure you know what a DDOS attack is, but I may as well spell it out for everybody else.

Extremely oversimplified explanation of a DDOS attack:
The internet works utilizing data packets. Think of them like letters. These data packets get sent to and from a server... kind of like letters to and from the post office. Normally when a packet is sent to the server, it has some kind of data in it. It can be data for the server to read, or a data request from the server. Think about that like a letter with a question in it. A DDOS attack works by sending thousands of letters with questions in them all at once. Whoever is supposed to get those letters can't answer those questions fast enough or send the mail back so they just give up. From that point on, it doesn't matter if that server gets more data packets from genuine users surfing the web because it's already stopped doing it's job.

Anonymous gathers a crap-ton of script-kiddies and has them all attack a specific domain or IP at once, but something smells super fishy. No public warnings. No set date of attack. No expressed reason for attack. Anonymous usually goes out of their way to make their attacks publicly known and they try to avoid casualties.

This attack didn't even attempt to avoid casualties. Attacking the DNS servers directly caused hundreds of thousands of domains to essentially "deregister". In other words, it didn't down any websites, but the only way they could have been reached is by an external IP address.

Anonymous did express a dislike of GoDaddy's hosting account policies a long while back, but attacking their DNS server doesn't do a damn thing to any of the sites GoDaddy actually hosts.

Actually the LOIC when used in this fashion must be either individually triggered (Lame) by users or triggered by something... Lately this has been the use of a IRC channel that passes commands to the tool and runs the attack. So not quite as simple as script kiddies playing with toys but it is a tool that requires no specific skill to use, but you need to be inside the loop to just to get the information unlike typical VIRUS like DDOS attacks that either contain pre configured schedules and targets or receive commands via a backdoor command sent from a server. Anonymous has never used the VIRUS like DDOS Zombie PC attacks but rather allowed members of Anonymous to choose to participate or not depending on their feelings on the matter. This freedom to choose is at the Core of the Anon movement and is essential.

The attack on the GoDaddy would have involved more than a single IP or name server, they have a very robust system so this may not have been a flood DDOS attack. A while back Anon attempted to take down Amazon's cloud over some of the wikileaks issues be only managed to slow the leviathan of the internet a slight bit before calling it all off.

The method of the attack at this point is unclear as GoDaddy have not issued a formal statement (nor is it likey that they will because it will point out how it was done) but it is not falling into the norm for something done by the core of the Anon movement for a variety of reasons.

Only time will tell.