Panix in a Panic as Entire ISP Domain Gets Hijacked   - 1,579 Views,

Internet service provider Panix.com found that their entire domain was hijacked over the weekend. The ISP, which serves the greater New York City area, found that the domain had been moved from their own registrar to one in Australia, that their DNS pointed to a site in the United Kingdom, and that all of their email (yes, including that of their users) had been redirected to a bogus site in Canada.

Ouch.

It is not yet clear how this was allowed to happen. Domain registrars for the most part all (should) adhere to recently introduced stricter standards governing the transfer of an Internet domain. It would seem that in order for someone to have pulled this stunt, it would require that both Panix’ regular registrar, Dotster, and the “new registrar”, MelbourneIT, must have each had some flaw in their system.

Some flaw which allowed someone to swipe Panix’ domain, and put their thousands of users at serious detriment. Indeed, Panix has advised its users that their email “should be considered lost or compromised”.

Said an unnamed Panix.com spokesperson “We are pulling our hair out here.”

Can you say “class action lawsuit”?

I knew you could.