Bloggers Taken Down by AnonymousOwn3r – Maybe

Issues have been popping up for hours now from upset bloggers saying their website was done. I was sad to report the bad news to some of them who could not figure out just what was wrong with their blogs. It was nothing they did, it was GoDaddy. What I didn’t know at the time was that AnonymousOwn3r a member of Anonymous as claimed responsibility for this action.

But Why?

Call me a crazy Liberal Tree Hugging Geekly Goddess but here I thought Anonymous was a bit like Robin Hood, working on the part of the people, for the good of humanity. What the heck is good about attacking blindly a huge group of bloggers.

I need to learn more!

So far the reasons are not clear, seemingly it is an act of opportunity taken by this hacker though I still hold out hope that there is a higher reason for this attack.

The hacker had this to say, among other things:

@downloadtaky people will not suffer because my attack to godaddy, i just wanna well you won’t understand because i did it.

I can’t agree however as some bloggers I know personally are professional bloggers, as in they earn their living, feed their children by blogging. Having had technical issues on Blogger for a single day I know it can be a hard ship. I learned blogger was far less secure and with little to no customer support I had to move.

Thankfully those on GoDaddy will get help. GoDaddy I trust is on this. Waiting for word from them to confirm this was a hack. 

Bloggers Effected By This, Please comment if you think bloggers are suffering because of it! 

UPDATE: It seems some are saying this attack on #GoDaddy was because once #GoDaddy supported #SOPA legislation that many believe is against our first amendment rights. Only if they researched at all they would know that GoDaddy listened to the people and stopped supporting SOPA late last year. LAST YEAR PEOPLE! Get with the program! Now tell me a real reason for this hack? I am thinking it was simply a target of large opportunity.

There are sharks circling and blog advice seems to be to tell people to jump ship and go with other providers. Infact the person who says they caused this is said to have a youtube video they are promoting that links to other hosts. Could this be a for profit hack on his part?

Update Sept 11 at 1am

Good News, It seems that GoDaddy has gotten all or at least most of their sites back up! They have not posted about the cause of the issue yet, still not verified if this was a hack and if so, who.

I can say that AnonymousOwn3r had this blog in his sights for a moment and thankfully didn’t take me down, yet. He also tried to leave a comment here but it was rather childish and rude so I marked it as spam as I really think that who ever this AnonymousOwn3r is, he is trying to get a payday or fame out of this and not actually trying to do anything important. Thats a shame. Also, as far as I can tell, the REAL Anonymous is not claiming this guy as one of their own. If I am reading it right, some might even be picking on him. I could be wrong though, I might be a geek goddess but even I do not know all the lingo used. It is hard to keep up with sometimes. Or I should just admit I am getting old maybe?

What ever the case, a lot has been learned. I feel badly for GoDaddy. I will keep the products I have with them and chances are I will purchase more in the future even. I think hosting though will stay with another company for time being!

To all the charities, small businesses, and bloggers I am very sorry today was so bad for you. Your not alone and this is not ok.

UPDATE: Sept 11 6pm

I was suspecting, GoDaddy announced that it was an internal network issue that caused the issues yesterday and not a hacker or attack. REAL Anonymous posters are saying things such as “told you so” and are not shocked. Looks like AnonymousOwn3r is nothing but a shallow Poser.

I did hear something interesting today about GoDaddy CEO and Elephant hunting? I need to look into that. That at least would have been a reason!