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Perl.com Taken over by Domain Squatters

• beermonster 6y ago
  https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2021/02/07/perl-com-gets-its-domain-back-normal-service-restored/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2021/02/07/perl-com-gets-it...
• asicsp 6y ago
  More details/discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfriendly_domain_take_over/ https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfrie...
• alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  Speculation: they’re selling on Afternic, which sounds more like a legitimate forgetting to renew and someone bought it during the grace period rather than a hack. ... wasn’t Perl.com an O’Reilly Publishers asset?
• hordeallergy 6y ago
  Not just twitter, whatsapp, facebook, etc - the DNS system needs replacing too.
  • gsich 6y ago
    why?
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Because something went wrong once! /s
      • archsurface 6y ago
        Accurate observation, and useful response. /s
    • FeepingCreature 6y ago
      Central authority is a poor substitute for social consensus. If you look at a case like this, there is absolutely no question or ambiguity "which perl.com domain people really want." This issue only exists because of an artificial monopoly and an application of capitalism to an allocation problem that doesn't exist. Domain names should be a thin wrapper around private/public keypairs. Domain keys should be pinned per application or per first use OS-wide, with configuration tools to unpin and update the mapping. Any critical access, such as update servers, should always use the full key anyways. There is no reason in principle that there shouldn't be multiple name-key assignments for perl.com, except inasmuch as it would make webdevs' and OS developers' jobs slightly harder. Hell, ping both and see which one matches the pinned https key for perl.com, and this problem would already have been solved! This whole monopoly is caused by a bad band-aid technical solution for a social problem that we can and should find a better solution for. I'm not saying "boycott DNS." I'm saying "the fact that everyone is fine with the current state of affairs is an embarrassment." I want an OS built from the core up around a web of trust model. I want my browser to ask my (manually introduced) peers "which of those versions of perl.com do you think is the one I want." I want a computer with no hardcoded central server queries at all. (And while we're at it, I want it connected to the internet via mesh links.) But I'll never get that, because it'll always be easier to just hardcode some central authority and go home.
      • tikkabhuna 6y ago
        How would you prevent a group from trolling or performing a hostile takeover of a small domain? How would someone acquire a domain? How do you determine consensus? In this case, as someone who doesn't follow Perl, how would I make an informed decision on which perl.com domain I really want?
        • hirako2000 6y ago
          It's not an obvious problem to solve, but nobody would invest much in performing a hostile take over of a small domain. In the case of Perl.com it looks like a hostile takeover, of a popular domain, and it didnt cost them much to take it over I guess.
  • thendrill 6y ago
    Yeh why. DNS is one of the few service that seem ok
• erikkri 6y ago
  Looking at whois history sites, it looks like the domain was owned by Tom Christiansen aka tchrist, which wrote Programming Perl, Learning Perl and the Perl Cookbook. The record wasn't supposed to expire until 2029, so not sure how the squatters got this domain.
  • cpach 6y ago
    Perhaps they pwned his e-mail acccount, or social-engineered their way to take control of his phone number. (Just guessing.)
    • fogihujy 6y ago
      There's always the chance someone social-engineered their way past the registrar's access control, or that they got some kind of access to the registrar's systems. Or the domain owner simply didn't read an email properly and clicked the wrong link. There's too little information to draw conclusions at this point.
  • xsc 6y ago
    Likely phishing or some other account takeover tactic. Also not "squatters". This domain was stolen.
• st_goliath 6y ago
  Reminds me of that one time in 2016 when X.org almost expired[1]. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Domain-Woes https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X.Org-Do...
  • PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    Xorg should have expired a long time ago.
    • Evidlo 6y ago
      I still get so many problems in Wayland that I plan to keep using Xorg for the forseeable future.
• superasn 6y ago
  Very strange indeed > @xsc: Looks like this breach also affected http://piracy.com http://piracy.com http://chip.com http://chip.com http://neurologist.com http://neurologist.com along with http://perl.com http://perl.com (https://www.afternic.com/listings/drawmaster https://www.afternic.com/listings/drawmaster)
  • EvangelicalPig 6y ago
    checking whois for each of those domains, my first thought is I sure hope Key-Systems didn't get owned :| EDIT: On a sidenote:If this[1] is true, looks like the attacker may have compromised another registrar that perl.com used (Network Solutions), moved domain to another registrar, than KS. Still a big concern though [1] https://nitter.net/DInvesting/status/1354778895749419013 https://nitter.net/DInvesting/status/1354778895749419013
    • xsc 6y ago
      KS is just the destination registrar. Most of the domains were from NetSol from what I can tell.
      • EvangelicalPig 6y ago
        as noted in my edit
• lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  So a potential service here: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/documentation-is-key-to-recovering-hijacked-domain-names https://www.icann.org/news/blog/documentation-is-key-to-reco... If documentation is key, then perhaps have a service that will, take your documentation, hash it and then you can store the hash on your domain root (much like google analytics). Then if you lose the domain, you have wayback machine style proof that the domain originally had these docs associated with it. (I can see some downsides to this but what do people think?)
• meshugga 6y ago
  I'm completely ok with this. Now let's forget that it ever existed. ducks
  • cutler 6y ago
    Back in 2000 I was trapped in the jaws of a shark called Java. Perl saved my life.
    • mrweasel 6y ago
      Off topic, I know, but I feel like there's a nice little story to be told there :-)
      • contingencies 6y ago
        Prose, please. There aren't enough like https://etherealmind.com/algorhyme-radia-perlman/ https://etherealmind.com/algorhyme-radia-perlman/
    • meshugga 6y ago
      How appropriate, in 2001 I was trapped with both and then some (Oracle), and I'm so glad I can now choose to be in the presence of neither. Back then I did devops for a moderately sized stocks platform with real time ticks and charting, the works. We had two large code bases, one in perl, one in Java. They both were bad times. Java, because the java coders didn't quite understand how threading worked, leaking all over the place. My job was to migrate the systems from AIX 64bit machines (that could deal with the memory leaks with only one restart per hour) to x86 Linux. It was kind of fun (because everything was pretty contained) until the stuff went into production, and the servlets died after 4-5 requests each under non synthetic load. And Perl, because the perl coders thought it was of benefit to write code that nobody could read but the author, and that it was OK to have dependencies on very old and very new libraries at the same time. I gotta admit, the Perl stuff ran more stable. But it was still hell to upgrade the machines or debug even the smallest issues.
  • Tepix 6y ago
    You could also try to contribute something positive instead of snarky comments.
• grumple 6y ago
  Looks like it was an account hack and transfer, not a registration lapse [1]. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfriendly_domain_take_over/gl2tghw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfrie...
• chriszhang 6y ago
  What is the full story behind this? How did it happen? Was it a domain hijack? Did someone forget to pay the bill? Do I need to worry about this for my domains?
• rurban 6y ago
  perl11.org was forgotten to be paid last year (not me). So it is gone also.
  • whizzter 6y ago
    Was it connected to something important/used? I have a suspicion that without much traffic squatters will give up on it eventually.
    • rurban 6y ago
      It hosted cperl and rperl, which are important. Perl5, as you might not know is not developed anymore, it's only maintained into oblivion, getting worse and worse over time. 20 years no new features, only design mistakes over mistakes piling up. perl11 provided the continuation of Perl development, but the maintainers in their tunnel vision do not agree (yet). Almost everything they did in the last 6 years came from cperl, but it's still only 10%. Now it's on perl11.github.io When the squatters give up, fine, but GitHub served us well over the years. Better than everyone else, esp. Google.
      • sigzero 6y ago
        Uh Perl 5 is in ACTIVE development and has gotten new features. Everything you said about Perl 5 is wrong. Perl 7 (skipping Perl 6 obviously) is on the table and being talked about and Perl 5.34.0 is going to be released in a couple months setting the stage for Perl 7.
        • mst 6y ago
          reini has a ... unique ... perspective on perl development, which is probably related to how he got banned from the p5p mailing list for repeatedly calling people incompetent without giving actual technical reasons against the patches. cperl is an interesting fork with a lot of good ideas, but his tendency to submit patches to core modules to work around cperl bugs without full explanation and then yell at the people asking for justification and actual tests for those changes meant that such patches don't tend to actually end up applied. Given reini is undeniably brilliant when at his best, I consider this deeply unfortunate, but I've tried to explain the concept of "even if you're sure you're right, you need to actually convince people of that" multiple times both online and in person and apparently not got through, so at this point I can only suggest that people who're interested in his brilliance follow their code for themselves and submit the interesting stuff as patches. A great shame, but things are what they are.
• eruci 6y ago
  To add insult to injury, There are ads on perl.com about "Start programming with Python"
• mzs 6y ago
  > We're still trying to unravel this and I can't get into details. However, it looks like there was an account hack. I don't know how long that would take to rewind. We're looking for people who have actual experience dealing with that situation so we can dispute the transfer. If you've actually gone through thatprocess, please get in touch. > The perl.org and perl.com domains are unrelated and have different rightful registrants, so this doesn't affect perl.org. briandfoy 1 hour ago https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfriendly_domain_take_over/gl2tghw https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/l6d8ws/perlcom_unfrie...
• bhartzer 6y ago
  Let’s call it what it is. It’s not a domain taken over by squatters. The domain was stolen. I’ve seen other domains get stolen recently, it seems to be about the same time. Patterns dot com Piracy dot com Perl dot com All stolen at around the same time. With patterns, the thief hacked the network solutions account, put the domain under privacy, transferred it to a Chinese registrar, and then put the old whois data back. They then tried to sell it on sedo and afternic for 10 percent of what it’s worth. I have been able to get sedo and afternic to remove the listings. But patterns has not been returned to its owner after about two months. Still working with the owner and registrars on that. My advice is to lock down your domains, register them for at least 5 years, and if there are changes deal with them quickly. Once a domain is transferred it’s much harder to get back. It can be done, but it’s a lot of work to unravel it all.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • xsc 6y ago
    Correct. Use a registrar with 2FA using authenticator or hardware key. No SMS 2FA. Rolling 5 year renewals will work for not letting the domain expire, but not for this scenario.
    • bhartzer 6y ago
      Agreed, definitely use 2fa if it’s offered. What many people don’t realize is that there are a lot of registrars still using less secure platforms. So moving to a more secure registrar can help as well. I mention registering for 5 years in the future because if something like this happens, there will be no question as to whether or not you lost the domain because it expired.
      • pletsch 6y ago
        Any recommendations on a good registrar?
        • 6y ago
• classichasclass 6y ago
  Floodgap was part of this. I just talked to a very helpful person in NetSol's security department and she looked through the ticket. It was initiated by a web chat, and they produced official looking but completely fraudulent documents (photo ID, utility bill, business license, etc.) to prove identity, so this was socially engineered and apparently for multiple domains. They're supposed to contact me tomorrow for more on the post mortem.
• namelosw 6y ago
  It sounds like it's hacked since it expires at 2029? Is there any way to sue anybody to win it back?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• FerretFred 6y ago
  Looks like it's in Chisinau, Moldova right now... where next I wonder?
• briandfoy 6y ago
  Thanks to everyone who has given advice and helped us develop a timeline of the incident. I'm not part of the network and asset management: I'm a mere editor of the website. The current registrar has contacted me. They've locked the domain and we need to submit some paperwork. It shouldn't be that big of a deal even though it's annoying. All of this was handled quickly (12 hours) because of the attention to the internet in general.
  • bhartzer 6y ago
    That's great news, Brian. The key here is that it was handled quickly. The longer it goes on unnoticed, the more difficult it becomes to unravel, as a domain gets transferred from registrar to registrar and from owner to owner. I can confirm that Neurologist dot com and Chip dot com were also stolen at the same time. There may be others.
• hannob 6y ago
  Honest question: Was this an important host name? From what I can see Perl the programming language has its home at perl.org, which is running fine. The .com does not show up prominently when googling for perl. Based on Google's cache it seems it was some kind of programming-related news page. Was it relevant/popular in the Perl community?
  • davorg 6y ago
    Historically, it was the Perl web site for a long time. It was registered by Tom Christiansen in 1994 and soon afterwards, he let O'Reilly run it - and they used it to post useful Perl news and articles for a long time. But O'Reilly's interest in Perl waned and it sat, moribund, for several years (which probably explains its lack of Googlejuice). A few years ago, the Perl community approached Tom and he let them take over running it. The team behind the PerlTricks web site ported over all the old articles and had been posting new ones. It had become a pretty useful resource again. So, yes, it would be a shame to lose it. But from what brian has posted elsewhere on this thread, that seems unlikely to happen.
• ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
  lolz
• andredz 6y ago
  I was wondering why none of the links were working. I was trying to read on the beginnings of Perl6 (now Raku) design (such as in https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/perl6rfc.html/ https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/11/perl6rfc.html/) and also check some States of the Onion. At least everything is currently accessible either through the Wayback Machine or here: https://perldotcom.perl.org/ https://perldotcom.perl.org/