[HN Gopher] The Hijacking of Perl.com
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Hijacking of Perl.com
        
       Author : leejo
       Score  : 272 points
       Date   : 2021-03-01 10:31 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.perl.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.perl.com)
        
       | emmelaich wrote:
       | The mentioned BizCN registrar has a very shady past according to
       | a simple web search.
        
       | ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
       | What would solve the constant fear of losing important domains is
       | making domains NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
       | 
       | This would make the situation better in two ways:
       | 
       | 1: A normal domain move can only happen when the domain owner
       | signs the transaction. If the domain owner claims to have lost
       | their key, this would raise a red flag and result in an in-depth
       | analysis which the domain owner has to pay.
       | 
       | 2: The movement of the domain would be announced on the block
       | chain. So in case the in-depth analysis has been tricked by an
       | attacker, the righteous owner would be alarmed immediately. For
       | this they would use some service that monitors the blockchain for
       | them. They could then reverse the transaction with their key.
        
         | michaelsbradley wrote:
         | https://app.ens.domains/
        
         | martin_a wrote:
         | No need for some fancy blockchain technology here.
         | 
         | You can't move most domains without written consent of the
         | domain owner and you'll have to properly identify yourself
         | before requesting that.
         | 
         | In the end it's about how the registrar handles those things.
        
           | ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
           | Define "move" here. I move domains between registrars every
           | now and then and I never have written anything on paper to do
           | so.
        
             | martin_a wrote:
             | If I want to move .de domains from one hoster to another,
             | I'll need authentication codes and alike for that. This
             | process has been automated and digitalized but the current
             | domain owner has to explicitly acknowledge and allow the
             | transfer.
             | 
             | This is how DENIC handles those things at least.
        
         | knorker wrote:
         | No, this is just yet another thing that "the blockchain" does
         | not solve.
         | 
         | I actually can't tell if you're being serious, or if this is
         | satire about the fact that people think "the blockchain" can
         | just be sprinkled and solve any problem.
        
         | javert wrote:
         | Absolutely right.
         | 
         | I'd certainly pay for this service.
         | 
         | Imagine domain names _actually_ being secure, like bitcoin is
         | secure.
         | 
         | I've posted this idea here before and also got shat on and
         | downvoted to oblivion.
        
       | layoutIfNeeded wrote:
       | Took me a while to figure out what this "Perl" was, so if you're
       | like me, I'm gonna save you some time: "Perl" seems to be the old
       | name of the popular Raku language.
        
         | hazbo wrote:
         | Perl and Raku are two individual languages. Perl is still very
         | much alive https://www.perl.org/
        
           | jhfdbkofdcho wrote:
           | I think he was making the funny
        
             | hazbo wrote:
             | The use of the word "popular" made me wonder this. Either
             | way, happy to clarify the facts in the case that other
             | people didn't get the joke.
        
         | _joel wrote:
         | Jesus, this makes me feel old. Perl's been around for decades,
         | being a very common CGI language pre PHP days and also for
         | general sysadmin work.
        
           | forgotmypw17 wrote:
           | I still use it as my primary language, and with CGI too.
           | 
           | It's lightning fast, it's mature, every problem is solved, it
           | still works great out of the box, and compatible with just
           | about every web server out there.
           | 
           | By "mature" I mean that any question I google there is real
           | content, and not just StackOverflow. Real web-based
           | knowledgebases which also happen to be lightweight HTML,
           | without JS required, and with real solutions to the problem.
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | I like perl, but the temple you build with it becomes very
             | complicated. Sadly the fortress of TCL has won me over.
        
               | forgotmypw17 wrote:
               | I try to write it in "PHP style", meaning just a whole
               | bunch of "my $someVariable = SomeFunction()", and as
               | little as possible of "=~ /^#^$^&*&/ <> ;~;"
               | 
               | It helps that I try to build and maintain two versions of
               | the same codebase, so I tend to write in a language which
               | is the lowest common denominator of PHP and Perl.
               | 
               | I'm at a modest 14K lines now, and still find that I can
               | find what I'm looking for with just a global text
               | search...
        
           | iso1631 wrote:
           | Perl's pretty much dead, I haven't written any perl all month
        
             | iso1631 wrote:
             | Perl is now alive. 100% of the code I've written this month
             | is perl.
        
               | hpcjoe wrote:
               | I see what you did there!
               | 
               | I wrote in Perl, Python, and Julia this month (yeah, 1st
               | day). Probably will have some C++ and R as well later.
               | We'll see.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | laserharvest wrote:
         | Are you being sincere?
        
         | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
         | You made my day, thanks!
        
       | psim1 wrote:
       | A slow heist by Chinese spammer/scammers to use a popular domain
       | name. This is clever and in direct contrast to the usual gobbling
       | up of domains for spam/scam purposes as soon as they expire at
       | the peril of a forgetful owner.
        
         | indymike wrote:
         | Why try to assign a nationality to the thieves if that is not
         | known? Domain theft is not very clever (there's a record at
         | every step) and very much reversible. Being the buyer of a
         | stolen domain is a bad spot: you will lose the domain and your
         | money, too.
        
       | ctur wrote:
       | That is an incredibly long winded way of saying very little.
       | 
       | Which is ironic as that is literally the opposite of the Perl
       | programming language itself.
        
       | ThePhysicist wrote:
       | Key-Systems GmbH seems like a legitimate business to me (judging
       | by their website and company register data), seems they acquired
       | the domain from the Chinese registrar to resell it. Still, seems
       | hard to believe that you wouldn't become suspicious when a
       | Chinese company offers you a very popular domain name that seems
       | to be in active use for sale.
       | 
       | That said I've seen registrars make some glaring mistakes in the
       | past and many still rely on faxed documents to authorize domain
       | transfers, so it's not a surprise that stuff like this happens.
       | Often, all it takes is finding out who's the registrar (easy),
       | obtaining a blank transfer authorization form from that registrar
       | (easy again), obtaining the personal or company data of the
       | domain owner (a bit more difficult but still doable), fill out
       | the form and fax it in. Some providers won't even bother to send
       | you a notification when transferring the domain, so like here the
       | legitimate owner won't notice it's gone before it's way too late.
        
         | ryanlol wrote:
         | Key-Systems is a huge registrar. It is very unlikely that they
         | acquired this domain themselves, more likely it was a client of
         | one of their many resellers.
        
         | oefrha wrote:
         | Neither of the registrars "acquired" or "offered" anything.
         | They simply accepted transfers from some fraudulent registrant,
         | and there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't allow transfers
         | of domains "in active use", popular or not. It's just business
         | as usual for them. The domain was eventually listed by the
         | registrant on Afternic, a domain marketplace. Again, neither of
         | the bounced-through registrars got anything to do with the
         | listing and reselling.
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | I literally shuddered when I read "Perl NOC". It was like the
       | ghost of a neckbearded BOFH breathed down my neck... On a serious
       | note, I absolutely adore the simplicity of their blog
       | (https://log.perl.org/)
        
       | iamricks wrote:
       | I had this same thing happen at my company, Godaddy somehow
       | allowed someone to disable dual auth through social engineering
       | and reset our password through a compromise email. They proceeded
       | to initiate a domain transfer. Not sure how Godaddy would allow
       | disabling dual auth over the phone.
        
       | omega3 wrote:
       | I had a very hard time reading this article. It's filled with so
       | many platitudes and truisms ("And, it always helps to have
       | friends and good relationships with the people who are able to
       | help.") and yet it doesn't really explain what happened. For all
       | I know they might have forgotten to pay for the invoice.
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | I thought this article was interesting from an incidence
         | response point of view, perhaps it have been better framed with
         | a different title.
        
         | rjbwork wrote:
         | Yeah it's not very good writing, but the tl;dr is that someone
         | executed a social engineering attack against Network Solutions,
         | got them to update contact information for the domain owner to
         | themselves, transferred it to BizCN, then transferred it to Key
         | Solutions, and then attempted to auction the domain name for
         | $190k.
        
           | omega3 wrote:
           | It reads like the author is basically guessing, in the
           | lessons learned he mentions 2FA and in the same sentence he
           | mentions that it might not have helped ultimately. He
           | mentions it's a speculation, he'c not the injured party.
           | Someone else did some "forensic work" yet the link doesn't
           | work. I feel this should have been written by the domain
           | owner or the registar.
           | 
           | Couple of other issues: "It's important to have one face
           | (mouth?) to represent the diligent work everyone was doing."
           | From the registar article: "the Perl team has yet to respond
           | to our request for a comment"
        
             | briandfoy wrote:
             | I don't know who The Register tried to contact, but it
             | wasn't me. As soon as their article came out, however, I
             | contacted the reporter.
             | 
             | And, I've fixed the broken image. Thanks for noticing that.
        
         | bmn__ wrote:
         | grep "What we think happened"
        
         | stanislavb wrote:
         | OK, at least it isn't only me.
        
         | CapriciousCptl wrote:
         | At the very end they speculate it was a social engineering
         | attack at their registrar that started last year and affected
         | multiple domains. Oddly, the author says they weren't "the
         | injured party" and therefore didn't ask the registrar to verify
         | that. I'm not stating the registrar because there's no
         | supporting evidence that they were at fault but the author gave
         | it in the article.
        
           | DFHippie wrote:
           | He says he himself was not the injured party, a legal term,
           | so the information was not provided to him and he does not
           | have a legal right to it.
        
             | Firehawke wrote:
             | This. There's only so much he can talk about from his side,
             | and whoever legally owns the domain will have to provide
             | information on what exactly happened-- should he wish to.
             | That's also important, the owner may not want to talk about
             | it in public (but that would just make the initial blog
             | post even stranger, so I'm assuming they eventually WILL
             | speak up about the rest..)
        
         | amatecha wrote:
         | I mean, the second paragraph starts with "First, this wasn't an
         | issue of not renewing the domain."
        
           | omega3 wrote:
           | The article was changed since my original comment.
        
         | soulnotsoviet wrote:
         | Sorry but individualization and soul and style and wit are
         | American ideals. If you want drab Soviet style information
         | only, look elsewhere.
        
         | prussian wrote:
         | I agree the article did a bad job keeping me interested, but I
         | think it is more of a statement about the rumor mills and fake
         | news about the takeover and to be cautious about falling into
         | it.
        
       | woodrow wrote:
       | If you own a high value domain, you should consider asking your
       | registrar/registry to turn on a registry lock [1] which protects
       | you from compromises or social engineering at your domain
       | registrar. It's a little more expensive and can slow down NS
       | delegation updates, but otherwise you run the risk of what
       | happened here to perl.com, which can be extremely disruptive even
       | if your attackers don't try and resell the domain.
       | 
       | You can check the status of a domain by looking for "Status:
       | server{Delete,Transfer,Update}Prohibited" in the whois response
       | for that domain [2].
       | 
       | [1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/01/does-your-domain-
       | have-a-...
       | 
       | [2] https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-
       | regi...
        
         | EvangelicalPig wrote:
         | I know NetSol in theory supports registry lock, but last time I
         | checked they want >$1000/year for it, and it's kind of shitty
         | they don't offer robust access controls internally so you end
         | up paying for it (and other registrars offer registry lock (and
         | hopefully competent 2FA on top of that!) in the ~$500/year
         | range)
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | epc wrote:
           | Pairdomains (pairdomains.com) offers it for $0.00/year.
           | 
           | But...be absolutely, 100%, certain that the information
           | contained in the registry record is 100% accurate for name of
           | registering organization and contact information. Because the
           | process to unlock can be quite...difficult if the information
           | is slightly off.
        
             | dwohnitmok wrote:
             | An unfortunate side effect of defending against social
             | engineering attacks that can use very small inaccuracies to
             | be successful.
        
             | EvangelicalPig wrote:
             | pairdomains.com doesn't have serverUpdateProhibited, which
             | is the "registry lock" protection. The reason why it costs
             | money is because I believe it involves the registrant,
             | registrar and registry coordinating a manual unlock out of
             | band, so in theory if the registrar-registry API is
             | compromised, you're still be protected.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | There's zero reason to still use NetSol in 2021 except sheer
           | masochism. Namecheap offers 2FA and registry lock for free.
           | 
           | Seriously, transfer your domains to almost literally any
           | other registrar. They'll be better than NetSol.
        
       | cfcf14 wrote:
       | Aside from the primary content regarding the hijacking the
       | registrar, I really enjoyed reading about the methodological
       | approach they adopted for tracking information and contacts
       | during the crisis.
       | 
       | But to the primary content - I've been surprised at just how ad-
       | hoc much of the internet backbone infrastructure is as I've
       | learned more about it. The same could be said about the payments
       | processing industry! Beneath all the complexity and sleekness
       | underlying the tools we use every day seems to eventually lie a
       | system of IOUs, with an honor-based resolution mechanism between
       | sufficiently trustworthy entities.
        
         | louwrentius wrote:
         | > Beneath all the complexity and sleekness underlying the tools
         | we use every day seems to eventually lie a system of IOUs, with
         | an honor-based resolution mechanism between sufficiently
         | trustworthy entities.
         | 
         | This is how societies - in the end - work. It is all about
         | trust, I think.
         | 
         | And although there are forces to undermine that fundamental
         | trust, it does still work.
        
           | stjohnswarts wrote:
           | It's how the fiat money system works as well.
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | There really isn't a different way to work honestly. Either
           | we rely on trust or force and that trust and force can be
           | transferred and dissipated through a legal system but force
           | loses its transferable value very quickly while trust can be
           | passed on many times.
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | If you recall from January, even with the US election you'd
         | only need a conspiracy of a few hundred people (congressmen) to
         | completely overturn the election for whatever result you want.
         | 
         | Society is made out of string at best
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | That conspiracy was surprisingly widespread and the normal
           | societal blocks didn't manage to engage early enough in the
           | process to stop it but, in the end, we made through it
           | alright due to societal pressures at large.
           | 
           | I don't know what specifically would've tipped it the other
           | way but I think there were several large players able to
           | extend effort that ended up not doing so simply due to a lack
           | of need (i.e. the military in a non-show manner).
        
             | btilly wrote:
             | I believe that the point was that if that group decided to
             | overturn the results, the democratic will of the entire
             | population would not have overruled them. The intent of
             | those provisions is for a case like 1877 when the
             | democratic will of the people was actually in question.
             | 
             | Unanticipated in the Constitution was that a group of
             | violent people would attempt to force Congress and the
             | Senate to overturn the results. Had the protestors
             | succeeded in that goal, it would have effectively ended the
             | Republic. We would continue to be a Republic in name, just
             | as Rome was after Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49
             | BC. But not in reality. And not too many years would pass
             | before even that charade ended. As happened in Rome when
             | Augustus Caesar became the first real emperor.
        
               | macintux wrote:
               | There's also a grassroots problem: the reason it took
               | desperate acts in the endgame to try to overturn the
               | election was that election officials around the country
               | refused to bow to pressure to change the results at the
               | local and state level.
               | 
               | That layer of defense can't be taken for granted,
               | especially given how aggressively hostile towards reality
               | itself many local GOP officials are becoming.
        
       | system2 wrote:
       | A very long article with no real information. Why did they even
       | decide to publish this weird thing?
        
       | brongondwana wrote:
       | We nearly had something like this happen to Fastmail many years
       | ago:
       | 
       | https://fastmail.blog/2014/04/10/when-two-factor-authenticat...
       | 
       | Scary stuff. Basically we had 24 hours to dispute via email when
       | a fax was sent to our registrar with a faked up Australian
       | company registration and a fake passport asking to remove 2FA and
       | change the owner email to an address @qq.com.
       | 
       | At the same time, our hostmaster email address had been signed up
       | to hundreds of non-double-opt-in mailing lists, so that there was
       | lots of noise for this email to be lost in.
       | 
       | We had to fight very hard to be allowed to see the fax that was
       | allegedly from us, so that we could see what they had done.
        
       | funkisjazz wrote:
       | A bit off topic, but I like the usage of "social engineering
       | attack" instead of "anything to do with the word
       | computers/cyber/hacking", because it places the onus on the
       | correct parties and the correct systems that failed.
        
       | OliverJones wrote:
       | Nice work, Perl.com team! And, a very helpful incident report we
       | can all learn from.
        
       | k_sze wrote:
       | I'm surprised that the domain name ownership hasn't been
       | transferred to the Perl Foundation or something. Things might
       | look ugly if Tom suddenly dies.
        
         | bityard wrote:
         | Why? Perl.com doesn't have anything to do with the Perl
         | Foundation. It's a collection of blog articles from various
         | Perl developers.
         | 
         | The website for Perl is perl.org and was not affected at all by
         | the perl.com hijack.
        
           | k_sze wrote:
           | The Perl.com website is already _managed_ by the Perl
           | Foundation. I feel like it 's important enough that it
           | warrants being under the full custody of the foundation.
        
             | briandfoy wrote:
             | No, the Perl.com website is managed by David Farrell. The
             | domain is owned by Tom Christainsen. The Perl Foundation is
             | not involved with the operation of either.
        
               | galgalesh wrote:
               | The "about" section of the website says
               | 
               | > Since 1997 Perl.com has been the home for quality
               | articles about Perl programming, news and culture. The
               | website is managed by the The Perl Foundation.
               | 
               | They might want to update this if it isn't the case.
        
       | hnarn wrote:
       | > John Berryhill provided some forensic work in Twitter that
       | showed the compromise actually happened in September. The domain
       | was transferred to the BizCN registrar in December, but the
       | nameservers were not changed.
       | 
       | Isn't this preventable with "clientTransferProhibited"[1]?
       | 
       | > This status indicates that it is not possible to transfer the
       | domain name registration, which will help prevent unauthorized
       | transfers resulting from hijacking and/or fraud. If you do want
       | to transfer your domain, you must first contact your registrar
       | and request that they remove this status code.
       | 
       | If nothing else, you'd think that some simple monitoring would be
       | warranted if you own an important domain, like checking the exit
       | code of:
       | 
       | # whois -h whois.verisign-grs.com google.com | grep "Registrar:
       | MarkMonitor, Inc."
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-
       | codes-2014-...
        
         | bhartzer wrote:
         | If the domain thief has access to the network solutions
         | account, they can just remove the domain lock. They have the
         | keys to everything.
         | 
         | There are more secure registrars than network solutions that
         | require much more to transfer, like others have executive lock.
         | You can specify certain terms that must be done before a
         | change. Like the registrar must call you on a certain phone
         | number and get a password verbally.
         | 
         | At DnProtect, we are aware of at least 20 domains that have
         | been stolen since the beginning of the year. Most from network
         | solutions.
        
           | 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
           | I don't understand the expected outcome from this attack.
           | 
           | The hijacking of perl.com was front page news for the
           | technical community. Did the thief really think they'd just
           | be able to drop it on Sedo or Afternic and be done with it?
        
             | edoceo wrote:
             | Ransom maybe?
        
               | bhartzer wrote:
               | Nah, ransom is not usually the goal by domain thieves.
               | They steal them to make a quick buck by reselling them.
        
             | bhartzer wrote:
             | I don't think it's really an attack on the domain Perl.com.
             | Rather, Perl was just one of the domains stolen at the same
             | time as others.
             | 
             | I'm aware of at least half a dozen or so domains that were
             | stolen at the same time, by the same domain thief.
             | 
             | This was not an attack or hijacking. It was the stealing of
             | domain names.
             | 
             | What these domain thieves do is steal the domain, transfer
             | it to another registrar, then attempt to sell them.
             | 
             | In this case, Perl.com just got caught up in a list of
             | domains that were stolen at the same time. Others stolen at
             | the same time also start with the letter P.
        
       | mprovost wrote:
       | Wow I haven't heard the name Tom Christiansen in years. I
       | remember when he used to comment on Slashdot. This inspired me to
       | find my slashdot login and dig up some of his old posts. I just
       | discovered his amazing eulogy for Gary Gygax [0]. I never knew
       | that Tom used to work at TSR (of D&D fame) before becoming a
       | programmer.
       | 
       | [0] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=475216&cid=22665150
        
         | robinhouston wrote:
         | He's still active online, but his online activity currently
         | seems to be concentrated at the Stack Exchange site on English
         | Language & Usage:
         | 
         | https://stackexchange.com/users/216196/tchrist?tab=activity
        
           | sundarurfriend wrote:
           | I often end up on his answers on StackOverflow when searching
           | things related to Unicode. [1]
           | 
           | They tend to be complicated "nothing's easy about Unicode"
           | type answers, which some users call out as pedantic. But I
           | much prefer getting the full picture from an expert like him
           | and then making pragmatic compromises myself where needed,
           | instead of the usual quick and easy answers that end up being
           | full of hidden traps.
           | 
           | [1]
           | https://stackoverflow.com/users/471272/tchrist?tab=answers
        
             | stjohnswarts wrote:
             | I too love it when people go overboard on a stackoverflow
             | question and get pedantic. Usually someone else gives a
             | tldr; but I go down the rabbit hole and try to learn
             | something ina addition to the short answer along the way.
        
         | collyw wrote:
         | He was one of the big names in the Perl world back in the
         | 2000s. Wrote some books (including the wonderful Perl Cookbook)
         | and I remember having a course at work given by the Tom
         | Chritstiansen Perl consultancy.
        
       | susam wrote:
       | A lot of domain name management runs on honour system. Here are
       | two relevant stories regarding this:
       | 
       | - The Duct Tape Holding the Internet Together:
       | https://medium.com/thisiscala/the-duct-tape-holding-the-inte...
       | 
       | - Sinkholed: https://susam.in/blog/sinkholed/
       | 
       | Disclosure: I am the author of the second story.
        
         | abhinav22 wrote:
         | Interesting read. What was your conclusion to the below?:
         | 
         | I also wondered if a domain name under a country code top-level
         | domain (ccTLD) like .in is more susceptible to this kind of
         | sinkholing than a domain name under a generic top-level domain
         | (gTLD) like .com.
        
           | susam wrote:
           | I am still using the .in domain name since the sinkhole issue
           | was resolved in Dec 2019. I haven't faced any issue again. So
           | that was a total of 1 issue in 14 years of using a .in domain
           | name. I am not certain if I can draw any conclusion yet other
           | than what is already mentioned in my blog post which @vxNsr
           | has quoted in a sibling comment.
        
           | vxNsr wrote:
           | That appears to be answered in the following sentences:
           | 
           | > _I asked Benedict if it is worth migrating my website from
           | .in to .com. He replied that in his personal opinion, NIXI
           | runs an excellent, clean registry, and are very responsive in
           | resolving issues when they arise. He also added that domain
           | generation algorithms (DGAs) of malware are equally, and
           | possibly more, problematic for .com domains. He advised
           | against migrating my website._
        
       | teddyh wrote:
       | This highlights a usefulness of not choosing the largest and/or
       | cheapest domain name registrar. I work at a small registrar, and
       | we know all our customers and communicate with them directly.
       | Social engineering attacks get harder in such an environment.
        
         | cesarb wrote:
         | > This highlights a usefulness of not choosing the largest
         | and/or cheapest domain name registrar.
         | 
         | Since the domain is that old ("This domain was registered in
         | the early 90s" according to the article), was there really a
         | choice? IIRC, back then the only domain name registrar
         | available was Network Solutions.
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | It doesn't take a lot of time to move to a new registrar. And
           | it should be seamless as long as you aren't relying on non-
           | registrar services from the old registrar and you set the
           | same nameserver settings at the new registrar.
        
           | iso1631 wrote:
           | Creation Date: 1994-08-16T04:00:00Z
        
           | Symbiote wrote:
           | That might be the reason for the initial choice, but there's
           | doesn't require staying with the same registrar now.
        
         | notRobot wrote:
         | Which registrar do you work for?
        
           | teekert wrote:
           | (S)He can't say or they risk growing too big ;)
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | I have been asked this before here on HN; my answer is here:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437951
        
             | notRobot wrote:
             | Very sensible answer :)
        
             | vxNsr wrote:
             | Hmmm... in that case I wonder if such offerings exist in
             | the US?
        
       | brabel wrote:
       | > And, it always helps to have friends and good relationships
       | with the people who are able to help.
       | 
       | It would be nice if, you know, people just did their jobs
       | impartially regardless of whether they know or like you. But the
       | reality is that not knowing the "right people" does indeed make
       | things much harder, as we hear often here on HN from small
       | businesses trying to deal with the tech giants.
        
         | ufmace wrote:
         | Unfortunately, it turns out to be really tough to handle every
         | possible edge case correctly without a little bit of cronyism.
         | 
         | People forget passwords, lose 2FA devices, etc all the time.
         | Many of the usual methods can be hijacked much more easily than
         | you might think. It's tough to make the right call for
         | legitimate user who messed something up versus a particularly
         | sly attacker every time without some out-of-band personal
         | knowledge about the person in question.
         | 
         | All of the fancy tech in the world can't beat "Hey, I know Tom
         | pretty well, this doesn't seem like something he would want to
         | do. Maybe I better ring him up through a medium I trust to
         | confirm this before I do it."
        
         | kowlo wrote:
         | Cronyism is embedded in most cultures
        
       | toast0 wrote:
       | > We think that there was a social engineering attack on Network
       | Solutions, including phony documents and so on. There's no reason
       | for Network Solutions to reveal anything to me (again, I'm not
       | the injured party), but I did talk to other domain owners
       | involved and this is the basic scheme they reported.
       | 
       | Look, if your domain is with Network Solutions, and you missed
       | the other wakeup call[1] to get off of them; let this be the
       | wakeup call.
       | 
       | Network Solutions was the right (only) choice for domains in the
       | 90s, but it hasn't been the right choice for domains in probably
       | two decades.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/08/whatsapp-...
        
       | blfr wrote:
       | So what actually happened? Neither OP nor linked press articles
       | seem to really explain it.
       | 
       | (There's a joke somewhere in here about how readable Perl is.)
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Skip down to the section labeled _" What we think happened"_.
         | 
         | Essentially, someone took over the Network Solutions domain
         | management account for the domain and transferred it to a
         | different registrar.
         | 
         | It's not clear if that was due to a weak password, compromised
         | contact email account, someone social engineering the Network
         | Solutions staff, or something else.
        
         | bhartzer wrote:
         | What actually happened is that a bunch of domain names were
         | stolen at network solutions. Many of which start with the
         | letter P. Perl was just one of them.
         | 
         | We probably will never know how it was done, as network
         | solutions won't say, and they shouldn't.
        
           | TwoBit wrote:
           | OK but it was probably social engineering.
        
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