A member of hacktivist group Anonymous has claimed responsibility for a hack targeting GoDaddy,the world's largest domain name registrar,which has resulted in thousands of websites being brought down.
The US service provider hosts millions of websites across the world,with customers ranging from large companies to small businesses.
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It was perpetrated by a hacker who goes by the handle@AnonymousOwn3r,the"security leader"of the hacking collective,who emphasised the attack was from him as an individual rather than Anonymous as a group.
"The attack is not coming from Anonymous coletive,the attack it's coming only from me,"he posted to Twitter.
The hack took down whole DNS servers,with@AnonymousOwn3r claiming he did it because he wanted"to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now".
A statement from GoDaddy says services have now been restored to the bulk of affected customers.While the hack caused annoyance for a portion of their 10.5 million users,who have 53 million domain names registered between them,GoDaddy reported that no personal data was accessed.
"At no time was any sensitive customer information,such as credit card data,passwords or names and addresses,compromised,"said a statement on its homepage.
The targeting of GoDaddy is the latest in a long line of increasingly common hacks for which Anonymous have claimed responsibility.Last month saw the hacker collective take down several UK government websites in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
