[conspire] (forw) Re: [SMOFS] panix update

[Rick Moen]

Of possible interest to other who own domains.  The NANOG archive is at 
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/ , and makes interesting
reading.

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date:         Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:06 -0800
Reply-To: SMOFS <SMOFS at sflovers.org>
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: SMOFS at sflovers.org
Subject: Re: [SMOFS] panix update
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Quoting Earl Cooley (shiva at IO.COM):

> The situation made eWeek.
> 
> "The Great Domain Robbery of '05":
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1751981,00.asp

There's something seriously wrong that neither author Larry Seltzer 
nor The Register's John Leyden[1] covered in their articles:  The
hijacking could _not_ have resulted from registrars merely following the
newer, relaxed transfer rules, for two reasons:

1.  Neither the outgoing registrar nor the domain owner (registrant) was
notified, as is required for valid transfers.[2]

2.  The domain was not _merely_ transferred, but also (at the same time)
silently put under a new domain-owner name, without the required
supporting documentation.

Thus, domain transfer rules were not followed at all.  So, either
replacement registrar Melbourne IT or NetSol/Verisign in its role as
back-end registry either made a ghastly data-handling error or has a
major security breach.

A Melbourne IT reseller in the UK might have been involved -- or not. 
But blaming this on the new ICANN transfer rules seems to miss the main
point that we domain owner / sysadmins have been pondering:  Which of
those two firms screwed up, and are we the next person their ineptitude
will injure?  Both have been troublingly uncooperative, in efforts to
pinpoint the cause.


[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/17/panix_domain_hijack/
[2] Or so they both say on NANOG; I'm inclined to believe them.

-- 
Cheers,                                      Hardware:  The part you kick.
Rick Moen                                    Software:  The part you boot.
rick at linuxmafia.com

----- End forwarded message -----