Scores of websites downed in GoDaddy DNS attack

Possible millions of websites went offline following an attack against US company GoDaddy overnight.

The attacks appeared to strike DNS servers run by GoDaddy, a registrar and hosting provider to some 5 million websites.

Hackers behind the Twitter handle Anonymous Own3r claimed responsibility.

GoDaddy has begun to restore services but has not offered insight into the outtage, saying only that financial data was not affected.

At 10:25 am PT, GoDaddy.com and associated customer services experienced intermittent outages. Services began to be restored for the bulk of affected customers at 2:43 pm PT. At no time was any sensitive customer information, such as credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, compromised.We will provide an additional update within the next 24 hours. We want to thank our customers for their patience and support.

Go Daddy spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll told the Los Angeles Times that the number of victims could run into millions.

Public records first spotted by Wired show GoDaddy handed control of its DNS servers to VeriSign about four hours after the attack.

Anonymous had previously butted heads with GoDaddy for its support of the axed Stop Online Piracy Act.

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