“There was an error in the checking process prior to initiating the transfer, and thus the transfer should never have been initiated,” Bruce Tonkin, the chief technology officer of Melbourne IT wrote in a message to the NANOG mailing list. “The loophole that led to this error has been closed.” Tonkin did not describe the “loophole” but said the transfer of the domain from Dotster to Melbourne IT was initiated through an account at a Melbourne IT reseller, which was set up using stolen credit cards. “That reseller is analysing its logs and cooperating with law enforcement,” he wrote.
Tonkin’s explanation solves the mystery of how the hijacking occurred, but will bring greater scrutiny of new ICANN rules implemented in November, which allowed transfers to proceed with a customer confirmation by the “gaining” registrar but without a similar approval by the “losing” registrar. Networks Solutions and a number of other registrars locked down all customer domains as a precautionary step, warning that the changes could lead to hijackings. Domain locking prevents changes in the registrar, contact information and nameservers for a domain. Dotster did not automatically lock its domains, but Panix officials insisted that Panix.com had been locked.
“No notification was received by either our registrar, Dotster, or us,” says Ed Ravin, systems administrator at Panix, told CIO Today. “Whoever did this found a way to transfer domains without going through the normal process, and it’s possible that anyone else’s domain could be hijacked the same way.”
Once Panix realized what had happened, it contacted .com registry operator VeriSign and tried to reach the registrars involved. “I spent *hours* trying to find working contact info for MIT and Dotster,” Panix CEO Alex Rosen said. “I didn’t find useful 24-hour NOC-type info anywhere. MIT apparently has no weekend support at all; I finally located their CEO’s cellphone in an investor-relations web page.”
Melbourne IT, which sells its domains through Yahoo and many other hosting firms, defended its claim of 24/7 customer service for resellers and technical contacts (although not retail customers), but said it will evaluate whether it can improve. “We are looking at our processes to ensure that incidents such as occurred with panix.com can be addressed more quickly within Melbourne IT, and also checking to ensure that an appropriate number of external people have access to the right contacts at Melbourne IT to fast track serious issues,” Tonkin wrote.
Others called for a broader solution to fraudulent domain transfers. “What the panix.com case clearly demonstrates is a lack of an emergency rollback procedure in the face of a bad transfer,” Mark Jeftovic wrote at CircleID, a portal for discussion of domain and DNS issues. “Clearly, something went wrong in this case. Despite panix.com’s belief that their registrar locks were set, somehow the domain was transferred. It matters little why or how it happened. The point is there is no emergency rollback procedure in place when something like this happens and there needs to be.”
Last week ICANN began seeking feedback on the November rule changes.