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stories filed under: "hijacking"
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Wed, May 13th 2009 1:57pm

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Filed Under:
alaska, copyright, crackho, hijacking, redirects, sarah palin



State Of Alaska Threatens CrackHo After Confusing Redirect With Hijacking...

from the why-lawyers-should-have-some-tech-knowlege dept

It's always bad news when the technically illiterate start filing lawsuits over technology issues. A few folks have sent in the news that the state of Alaska, under Sarah Palin's governorship, has (we're not making this up) sent a cease and desist letter to the website CrackHo.com supposedly for hijacking a page from the state's website and using the official seal of Alaska without permission -- which the state claims violates both state laws (fines up to $500 or six months in prison) and federal copyright laws.

So what did the site CrackHo.com do to deserve this? Well, it simply redirected anyone who went to Crackho.com to Sarah Palin's website on the state webpage. Yes. A simple redirect. And the state claims that this is hijacking the website, a misuse of the seal of the state and a violation of federal copyright laws. Based on that logic, with a few simple magic tricks, I've just made TinyUrl, Bitly and Is.gd guilty of the same things.

I mean... I'm sure the lawyers working for the state of Alaska have some free time on their hands right now... but... seriously? Did no one bother to actually investigate what they were threatening?

39 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Jul 7th 2008 4:12am

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Filed Under:
domain names, hijacking

Companies:
icann



If ICANN Can't Even Control Its Own Domain Names...

from the what-hope-do-the-rest-of-us-have dept

ICANN has been something of a joke. Charged with managing top level domain names, the organization has done a lot more to annoy users and force them to keep buying new domain names at high prices than do anything constructive in managing TLDs. And now it turns out that even ICANN can get spoofed. Hoaxers convinced ICANN's own registrar to hand over the controls for two of its main websites: ICANN.com and IANA.com, allowing each to be redirected elsewhere briefly. While ICANN was able to regain control over both domains within 20 minutes, the ease with which both were hijacked suggests that perhaps a more constructive use of ICANN's time, rather than coming up with new TLDs that cost too much money, would be to come up with better ways to prevent such hijackings -- and better ways to deal with such hijackings if you don't happen to be ICANN.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Apr 21st 2008 9:01pm

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Filed Under:
hijacking, page not found, phishing, vulnerability

Companies:
earthlink, verisign



Non-Existent Domain Hijacking Not Just Annoying, But A Security Threat

from the please-stop dept

Back in 2003, there was a huge mess over VeriSign's plan to create "SiteFinder," which effectively hijacked "page not found" messages online and inserted advertising instead. This also broke a bunch of online services that relied on accurate page not found messages. Eventually, VeriSign backed down, but over the last couple of years, ISPs have been starting to do the same thing on their own at a slightly different level in the process. However, some security researchers have demonstrated just how dangerous this can be, by using Earthlink's set up to show how it can be used by phishers to make pages look like they're really on someone else's domain. This particular hole has been patched, but it does demonstrate some of the unintended problems of hijacking a widely accepted standard behavior on the internet for the ISP's own purposes. The ISPs (including Earthlink in this case) always claim that they put up these ad pages as a "customer service" or to "improve their experience," but that's simply untrue. Such pages don't help matters. If a page can't be found, the user should be told that the page can't be found. They can do a search on a search engine themselves to find the proper page.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Mar 3rd 2008 3:32pm

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Filed Under:
hijacking, open source, shareaza

Companies:
discordia, shareaza



The Hijacking Of An Open Source P2P App

from the scammy dept

TorrentFreak has been following the ongoing alleged hijacking of an open source file sharing system called Shareaza. Late in December, somehow a New York-based company (Discordia Ltd.) gained control of the domain name Shareaza.com and put up a new site, though using much of the artwork from the original Shareaza site. Rather than offering up the open source Shareaza software, the new site started offering a subscription service that included adware. To add insult to injury, Discordia has also threatened the real Shareaza developers due to comments in a forum about what to do about the hijackers. The latest news is that Discorida (which TorrentFreak claims has connections to the recording industry) is trying to trademark the Shareaza name, which you would think shouldn't be possible, given that the open source developers were working on the project for a few years before Discordia got access to the domain name. The whole thing sounds like quite a mess in a way that's designed to likely trick users and/or discredit the open source Shareaza project.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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