If you visited TigerStartups today, you may have wondered why was it down for much of the day.  The reason?   GoDaddy.com was hacked today and millions of websites hosted by GoDaddy or domain names registered by GoDaddy were affected, including TigerStartups.

This happened around 2pm EST and lasted until about 7pm EST.  Like millions of other website operators, we were left to wonder what was causing this outage.  We checked our server, which is hosted by Amazon, and found nothing wrong, as confirmed by an Amazon support staffer.  We then checked to see if we were being hacked and found no evidence of it.  It wasn’t until we saw a tweet by GoDaddy in the early afternoon that we knew our website outage was out of our control.

GoDaddy’s Twitter account promised that the company was "working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible." However it took several more hours before most of the websites came back online. Around 7:30 EST, the site's Twitter said, "We're still working. Getting closer to normal. Thanks for all your patience and understanding."

The hacker who claimed responsibility uses a Twitter handle @anonymousown3r and tweeted, "#tangodown godaddy.com by @anonymousown3r."

This hacker, though not much is known about him, has struck before.  He is believed to be from Portugal. His twitter hashtag #tangodown have been used to signal his attacks against child pornography and other domains known to support restrictions to online privacy. The GoDaddy attack is by far his largest hack to date.

Ever since GoDaddy supported the US legislation Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), many hackers sent out warnings to GoDaddy to cease its support.  Despite GoDaddy changing its position on the issue, they continued to receive threats of cyber attacks.  AnonymousOwn3r claims that the attack against GoDaddy is not because he is "anti-GoDaddy", but that his motives will become apparent in time.