> Response wasn't perfect but it was reasonable

I'm sorry, "We aware that we make it easy for about 20k domains to be directed to a malicious host, but we're not going to do anything about it" is reasonable?

But of course, it's because Matt "was messing around with things he shouldn't be". It's all solved - we just need everyone to stop doing things that DO "don't want people to do".

Meh the owners of the domains gave up control by pointing to someone else's nameservers.

You've just condemned 99% of domains. You really think that's reasonable?

I do think it's reasonable.

If the domain is added to the account there is no PoC, it's only for domains that have been removed from accounts but still have the nameserver values(meaning the domain is not being used at this point, there's no zone file if it isn't added to an account).

So this is mostly only going to affect currently derelict domains. I'm not saying it isn't something to worry about, but I do think it's a reasonable solution.

What you just described as reasonable is not the scenario I asked about, which is just "pointing to someone else's nameservers".

If I buy a domain from a registrar, I can point the registrar at Digital Ocean's nameservers (or AWS, CloudFlare, etc) for my domain (by adding NS records at the registrar). Then I need to go to Digital Ocean and add my domain and records to their nameservers (via their control panel or api).

If I remove my domain from Digital Ocean, it's my responsibility to then go to the registrar and point the registrar away from DigitalOcean's nameservers. (I own the domain, so I'm the only one the registrar allows to do this. Digital Ocean cannot do this.)

Now, your suggestion is that Digital Ocean goes and verifies that I'm the one who owns that domain. But how would they do this (legitimate question)? I imagine manual verification of ownership of every domain upon creation isn't feasible for their scale. Digital Ocean could query DNS, and see NS records pointing to Digital Ocean, but this only tells them someone configured the nameservers for that domain - it doesn't imply ownership. Digital Ocean can check Whois for the owner of the domain. Checking Whois might work for many cases, but at least some registrars have the option of obscuring Whois data.

It seems simpler to put the onus of security on the owner of the domain. I should cleanup my registrar's NS records before removing my domain from Digital Ocean to ensure nobody hijacks it. I would be satisfied as long as Digital Ocean maintained a simple eviction policy (I don't know if they do) as a way for legitimate owners to add their domains to Digital Ocean's nameservers.

Huh? 99% of domains point to some nameserver they aren't contracting service? That is, 99% have invalid NS?

(Obviously when I say somebody else's NS I mean a NS they have zero reason to think would respond with correct records. Obviously not talking about outsourcing DNS hosting.)

Except a (theoretical?) attacker isn't going to stick with the things they're "meant" to do.

I'd much rather know about this vulnerability via a researcher than when a high profile company loses control of their accounts / domains.

Except this isn't even a vulnerability, this is expected behavior given the design I think, to encounter an issue with it, you'd need to leave your domain with DO's nameservers, but delete it from your account. This would only happen if it's something you're not using anymore, or if you're a severely terrible admin.

> this isn't even a vulnerability, this is expected behavior given the design

Those aren't mutually exclusive. It's certainly possible to be broken by design.

> This would only happen if it's something you're not using anymore

From the writeup it seems like it would also happen if you registered a new domain and assigned the DO name-servers but didn't immediately point it to something.

Typically when registering a new domain you add it on your panel first and then change the NS as instructed. If you didn't follow that order, well, that's on you. It's the same design just about everyone providing DNS uses (CloudFlare, XName, FreeDNS, probably others).

But DO instructs you to do it in the reverse order: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-...

That's a community tutorial, however it does appear their panel is very sparse in instructions, when you add the domain you see a nameservers list. They don't even tell you that it's not pointed at them and that you should now configure your nameservers as other providers (like CloudFlare) do. I think you're right, some improved documentation would definitely be good here.

However it's the way I've always done it, because otherwise somebody else could add the domain first... it just made sense to me I guess.