Domain hijacking: Internet.com hit - News - Security

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Domain hijacking: Internet.com hit

October 13, 2000
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Domain-hijacking-Internet-com-hit-/0,130061744,120101059,00.htm

Internet.com was the victim of hijacking over the weekend.

CEO Alan Meckler said that the company discovered Sunday night that the registration information associated with its domains had been reassigned to a Canadian address.

"Many if not all of our domain names were not showing that we owned them anymore," he said. While traffic to the company's sites had not been disrupted, Meckler said the firm was lucky to have caught the problem quickly.

"They could have put up for auction or something. It would have been hugely embarrassing and costly," he said. "(But) we have prevented any slippage or leakage in traffic revenue or any other way."

Meckler said the company called domain-name registrar Network Solutions first thing Monday morning to resolve the problem.

Hijacked to Montreal?
A spokesman for NSI said the company was investigating the problem, although they did not yet know how the information had been switched.

According to the "whois" server on NSI's site, which lists registration information for domains, the Internet.com domain is now assigned to BCS, which lists an address in Montreal.

However, there is no listing for a firm of that name at that address.

While the problems suffered by Internet.com were mostly administrative, domain-name hijacking can have more serious effects.

Last month, the domains of two small Internet firms had their domain names reassigned and had traffic redirected, essentially taking the sites down.