Regardless of the source of systemwide
GoDaddy.com service outages last week, the disruption was a blow to the Web hosting company’s image.
The outages seem to either be a matter of incompetence or vulnerability, and Go Daddy has chosen the former as an explanation.
On Sept. 10,
GoDaddy.com went down, leaving millions of websites and email accounts without service for most of the day. Because of the speed at which information travels online, hours of lost service can be a huge deal. A self-proclaimed hacker and member of online “hacktivist” group Anonymous has claimed to be the source of the outages.
The individual, who goes by the Twitter handle Anoymous Own3r, said he or she caused a denial-of-service attack, which essentially refers to a number of compromised systems targeting a single entity, rendering it unusable for a certain amount of time. Imagine a large crowd of people forced to fit all at once through the door of a grocery store. These kinds of attacks mimic large amounts of traffic, placing strain on a website until it no longer functions on a temporary basis.
Scott Wagner, the CEO of Go Daddy Operating Co. LLC, has refuted claims that the outages were caused externally.
“It was not a ‘hack,’ and it was not a denial-of-service attack. We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables,” he said in a statement. “Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and
GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.”
Via Twitter, Anoymous Own3r said he was testing Go Daddy’s cyber security system, and later balked at claims that the service outages were an internal issue.
The user didn’t mention largely unpopular antipiracy legislation that Go Daddy supported and which led to the infamous January Web blackout. Go Daddy’s endorsement of the legislation led to the company taking a significant amount of flak in late 2011 and early this year. When the Web giant threw support behind the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, many boycotted the hosting company, and it ultimately lost large clients such as Wikipedia and image hosting site Imgur.
If last week’s outages were pay back for getting behind the legislation – which some deemed unconstitutional – it seems strange that someone orchestrating any alleged attacks would wait so long. An internal issue taking down millions of websites for hours during the business day isn’t necessarily a better scenario, though. It’s either the truth, or Go Daddy chose what it considered the lesser of two evils to keep customers from flocking elsewhere.
It’s a lose-lose situation for Go Daddy, which claims “99.999 percent uptime.” “This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it,” Wagner continued in his statement.
Springfield businesses were among those affected by Go Daddy issues.
Barron Hilton of Springfield-based Global Web Design said his firm received several calls from area businesses after their websites and emails were left unusable by Go Daddy’s service issues. He pointed to examples of local companies such as Carpet One Floor & Home, Coffman and Co. PC, Midwestern Gourmet, and Fritz, Nippes & Associates LLC, among those with websites having trouble on Sept. 10. A Springfield Business Journal social media post asking for information had some people report that Andy’s Frozen Custard and Davis Photographic Design also had issues.
Hilton offers a simple piece of advice: diversification. “The best way for companies to protect themselves is to use different companies or servers for email and Web hosting. It’s a good time for businesses to ask themselves, ‘Am I putting all of my (information technology) eggs in one basket?’” he said in a news release.
Will Go Daddy lose all of its business due to last week’s issues? Doubtful. Was it hurt? Definitely. It certainly was a good opportunity for competitors to step in to grab some business. One competitor, HostGator, even went so far as to use “godaddyisdown” as a special coupon code.
We may never know the true cause of the outages, but many will speculate. Time will ultimately tell the tale of the effects that day had on Go Daddy.
Springfield Business Journal Web Editor Geoff Pickle can be reached at gpickle@sbj.net.
