Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack Knocks GoDaddy to Its Knees

Domain registrar and hosting company GoDaddy.com was hit with “significant and sustained” distributed denial-of-service attacks Sunday, the company said.

The attacks caused four to five hours of intermittent service disruptions, including hosting and e-mail, said Neil Warner, GoDaddy’s chief information security officer, in an e-mail forwarded by the company’s public relations department. The services were back by later in the day.

The problems were not caused by GoDaddy’s response to the United States’ early switch to daylight-saving time (DST), Warner said. On Friday, one customer expressed concerns that GoDaddy would not be ready for the switch Sunday after the company’s technical support team told him it didn’t need to install DST patches because its servers are located in Arizona, which does not observe DST.

“With regard to DST, GoDaddy has been engaged in preparation and patching and worked closely with our vendors for some time leading up to the DST change,” Warner said in his e-mail, reiterating a statement he made on Friday, after IDG News Service asked the company about the customer’s concern.

GoDaddy has made “significant” investments to protect against attacks, he added. Its security teams will analyze the attacks to “identify additional defense mechanisms that can be used,” Warner said.

-Grant Gross, IDG News Service