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Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by jval on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @06:56PM (#6286824)
Ok, firstly whois Microsoft.com just returns all URLs with Microsoft.com in them, even as a subdomain, so they haven't been hacked and that result has been there for ages. Same goes for Verisign etc.

TechCrunch is reporting that registrar MelbourneIT has been hacked.. This wouldn't surprise me but I'm puzzled as to why either site would register with such a bad registrar.

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by seiji on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:30PM (#6287024)
Corrections:

They aren't URLs, they are domain names.

The ones that aren't the domain name you are looking for are glue records.

There's no way to globally search "show me every corp.*.com domain in existence."

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by devopstom on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:09PM (#6286891)
I think the important question here is "Why on earth did they choose that registrar, for something so crucial?"

I bet they'll put in for a transfer ASAFP now!

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by smackfu on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @09:40AM (#6289837)
>but I'm puzzled as to why either site would register with such a bad registrar.

Melbourne IT acquired part of Verisign a few years ago, their Enterprise "Digital Brand Management Services". I assume these big companies are either existing customers, or just new customers using that particular part of the service.

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by joshfraser on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:03PM (#6286858)
What do you mean? MelbourneIT are huge and generally have a pretty decent reputation.
Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by jval on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:17PM (#6286937)
Yeah, you're right that was probably a bit harsh given that I'm just running from what I've heard from others, and the fact that last year they were still charging $150 for registration. But who am I to know - I don't want to be one of those token HN trolls who pays out on people for the sake of it so I retract my initial comment.
Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by jbarham on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:12PM (#6286905)
> MelbourneIT are huge and generally have a pretty decent reputation.

Clearly you have never used their ticketing system.

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by jussij on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @02:12AM (#6288281)
I can vouch for that. From my experience this is how it their tech support works.

You raise and issue and they give you a ticket to track the issue.

They then send you an e-mail asking for more details.

You reply with the details and then they send you another e-mail saying the issue has been escalated.

A little while later you get another e-mail asking for the exact same details as the first e-mail, so you send them the same details.

You then get another e-mail saying this issue has been escalated.

Guess what happens next.

You guessed it, they send yet another e-mail asking for the exact same details you have now provided on two occasions.

They bounce you around in an infinite loop with a continual stream of spam e-mails until you finally get fed up and close the ticket.

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by jacques_chester on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @09:32PM (#6287476)
MelbourneIT have incumbency and good marketing. I've never been all that impressed with their prices or service.
Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by WettowelReactor on Wednesday August 28, 2013 @04:12PM (#6292318)
When we used to have MelbourneIT they sent us an email with our login password in it in a promotional email. When I inquired how they could possibly be properly securing my account when if they where storing my password in some recoverable fashion I got a form letter back stating they followed all the industry security practices. Needless to say I started the transfer of all our domains that same day.

Their exact response: "Our systems follow strict security measures and only enables us to send the password out to the main email contact in case of password recovery being requested. So rest assured your account password is safely stored with us. "

Re:Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Arm... by devopstom on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @07:10PM (#6286893)
Had. Until now.