A hacker group calling themselves "Nazi Gods" has taken credit for online retailer Amazon.com's offline status that lasted for 49 minutes on Thursday. Speculation anent the veracity of the dubious claim suggests otherwise, with Amazon maintaining the outage was not the result of an "attack" from an outside group.
"Presumably Amazon.com is one of the more bulletproof web properties in the world," said Hacker News contributor Nathan Bradshaw who first relayed word of the outage at approximately 11:40 a.m. (PT). "Whatever could have occurred to take it down for nearly an hour (at this point) can only be interesting!"
It was late Thursday evening that Twitter user NaziGods boasted responsibility for Amazon's 49-minute online snafu by tweeting, "This is what happens amazon when you support censorship."
The tweet included hastag "TangoFuckingDown," which leads to only four previous posts. Such posts include: Twitter user TheRaven's wondering why Amazon has been listed as "TFD," whereas IslandBorn links the ambiguous tag to a "Nuclear Facility in #Iran [that] has been hit."
Gizmodo questions NaziGod's alleged attack on Amazon by firstly pointing to motivation.
"Amazon's a huge whale," Gizmodo says, "and claiming credit for its TKO is a quick way to make a reputation for yourself whether you did it or not."
The suspicion NaziGods are interested in fame becomes more salient by their Twitter profile proclaiming they are "NOT anonymous," and their including an email to which inquiries about their activities can be directed.
Furthermore, NaziGods' "list of targets" posted seven hours prior to their taking credit for the outage does not include Amazon, Gizmodo continued.
Though Gizmodo also revealed NaziGods has a checkered history of similar false claims -- eg, their "bringing down" Cyber War News two weeks earlier - the hackers had this to tweet viz. reputed proof of their current admission of guilt: "Ask amazon, if you doubt us. First attack log was at 19:45 uk time. 1945 is hitlers death year."
Amazon remains mute on a reason for their site having experienced trouble.
Meanwhile, Network World's Brandon Butler deduced that by earning an estimated $10.8 billion/quarter, Amazon makes $4.9 million/hour and thus conceivably lost nearly that amount courtesy their outage - no matter who/what was to blame.
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