Owen Thomas’ Ditherati.com just got domain-jacked. And there continues to be a pattern. I’m not sure, but I’m betting that the new whois owner:
Administrator:
Huang ming drc@vip.163.com 13018501730
Huang ming
gd
Guangzhou,gd,CN 510000
is another fake, but convincing-sounding, international address. Just like hoopla.com and smug.com. I feel like I’m in some clumsily-updated Agatha Christie novel, where a mysterious stranger is knocking off all my favourite Websites, one by one. Except the real criminal here is no stranger at all. Is there a security hole in Network Solution’s system, being exploited by one group of domain thieves? Or even an exploit script doing the rounds? Hard to tell – but I wouldn’t be surprised. Those incompetent, money-grubbing, secretive little fatcats at NetSol have sat in luxury so long they couldn’t even secure their own disgusting little monopoly.
Update: it expired. Reminder got lost in the post. Netsol let off hook. Daaamn them!
VerisignOff – it’s the only solution.
And do you know what really pisses me off? The one thing that ICANN could have done, should have done, within a week of its existence, was shut down Network Solution’s (now Verisign) .com monopoly. The rest of that quango’s job is, as so many people say, merely what Jon Postel did alone at his workstation for decades. But when ICANNwere first given power, for a brief moment they had the political mandate to cut NetSol down to size, and spread the registry out. And no matter what they claim, they fumbled that chance. And within a year or so, they were the absolute creature of Verisign.