Go Daddy European Sites Hit By Large DDoS

Go Daddy, one of the biggest web hosting firms in the world, was hit by an unusually large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack yesterday, disrupting customers’ and its own sites, TechWeekEurope has learned.

Customers flocked to social media to complain about connectivity issues on Tuesday afternoon for a variety of Go Daddy services.

Go Daddy communications manager Nick Fuller later confirmed to TechWeek a significant DDoS hit Go Daddy European infrastructure, although he would not specify what port or network area was targeted. Early this morning, service had returned to normal.

DDoS strikes Go Daddy again

“Some of our customers in Europe experienced intermittent website connectivity earlier today. We mitigated what was a large-scale attack on our European Internet infrastructure,” Fuller said.

“The situation impacted both GoDaddy.com and customer hosted sites in Europe.

“Some customers wouldn’t have experienced an issue. Others would have had to refresh their browser to pull the website up. And others would have only parts of websites load into their browser.”

Go Daddy confirmed yesterday afternoon it was investigating connectivity issues across Europe. One user, IBM certified professional Daniil Monin, complained over Twitter he could not access any Go Daddy services, including virtual private servers, sites or email.

The issues appear to have been resolved now. But this is not the first time Go Daddy has been disrupted by a DDoS.

Last month, a number of websites hosted by the company went down, with both European and US customers affected by a DDoS.

However, last year, reports that a DDoS took out Go Daddy sites were later denied by the firm’s CEO Scott Wagner, who said downtime was due to technical problems.

DDoS is a growing problem for many businesses, as the power of volumetric attacks rises and the application layer hits get smarter. TechWeek recently learned British banks were being threatened by DDoS strikes from the same group that has successfully taken US banks offline over the last year.

Meanwhile, authorities last week arrested a suspect in Spain over DDoS attacks on anti-spam outfit Spamhaus, believed to be the biggest on record at 309Gbps.

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